


The best-laid plans

by DisaLanglois



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Gen, Magic Revealed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 56,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best-laid plans of mercenaries and magicians...</p><p>In the aftermath of the rout at Ealdor, a mercenary leader tries to hold his small band of survivors together and extricate them from the mess he got them into.  He thinks he’s come up with a simple plan to save them all, but things soon stop going according to the script.  And then they meet with a group of knights, led by a knight who calls himself Sir Andrew of Dollop Head.  </p><p>Arthur decides, for who-knows what reason, that he wants to spend his honeymoon chasing a gryphon all over Camelot.  Merlin, as ever, is tagging along behind Arthur, but his usual plan of pretending to be a simple servant isn't working.  Arthur has been behaving strangely ever since their return from Ealdor, and Merlin is worried.  On the road, they meet with a small band of riders who insist that they are also Knights of Camelot, and Arthur comes up with a strange new plan all of his own...</p><p>Finally finished!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The simple plan

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a bit of swearing and gryphon-bashing.

It seemed like such a simple plan. Foolproof, really. 

Everything had fallen apart, but there was still a way to extricate themselves from Helios’s disaster. There was no command structure left in Camelot to pursue them. There were no patrols, no garrisons, and no reports that would flit back to the Citadel about what they were doing. Camelot would be too busy putting itself back together to worry about their little group of survivors. 

The border was a mess – on both sides. Ordinarily, a kingdom with internal strife would attract the attention of its neighbours like a wounded sailor attracting the attention of sharks. But Camelot's neighbours had been caught flat-footed by the surprise attack that had been launched within Camelot's own borders. There had been no warnings - no troop concentrations, no royal levees calling up men-at-arms, none of the tell-tale signs that there was a war brewing. Mercia and Wessex and all the others were left scrambling, with no real idea of what was actually happening, and no communication into Camelot. The whole border area was a disorganised shambles of returning refugees and stragglers and abandoned crops. 

And of course, for the rest of the plan - there were red cloaks a-plenty, if you didn't mind where you got them. There were weapons, horses, armour ... all of it literally lying around for the taking. Yes, it was a mess; a delightful free-for-all; a freebooters' paradise...

"…and nobody will suspect a thing!” Cully said over the fire, the night they came across the dead patrol, the night after they realized that Helios was never going to pay them a farthing because Helios had got himself killed, the stupid twat. "Raid a bit, steal a bit, commandeer a bit more from the peasants - then we chuck the red cloaks, and before King Arthur knows it we'll be in Normandy.”

He looked around at their firelit faces, at the pitiful handful he had left. All the rest of his men were lying dead in Ealdor. _Rot in hell, Helios,_ he thought, bitterly, but he didn’t show it on his face. 

“It can’t be that easy,” George said.

“But it is!” He rubbed his palms together. “You'll see. Helios got killed because he was a fool. Helios forgot that if you want to play with the nobles, you have to be one. We're no nobles, oh no. We're _survivors_ , is what we are.”

“We’re with you, Cully,” Wulfric, his brother said. 

"Besides, what choice do we have? We stay here, and Arthur will catch us, and then we'll be finished, and no mistake. This is the only way to get out of this mess, but it will be easy!”

“I’ll do it,” Iorik said. Iorik was the tipping point. One by one, the rest of them agreed, each man glancing at his neighbour before nodding his head. 

Two days later, Cully drew rein on the crest of the road, and his stolen charger came to a sulky stop. His men drew rein around him, and sat back in their saddles to look down on the village. 

Iorik, George and Dinadan rode to his left. All of them looked unfamiliarly sparkly and bright in their ‘borrowed’ mail and red cloaks. Wulf sat to his right, on the scrawny chestnut gelding he’d insisted was the best of the loose horses. He had shaved off his thick black-and-grey beard. Mal, the youngster, sat his roan beyond Wulf, chewing hungrily on a stale bread-roll. Mal alone had been unable to get his hands on an intact red cloak, but at his age he could be taken for a squire-in-training. 

Cully resisted the urge to glance down at his own clothing. The golden dragon on his shoulder seemed to glow with outrage at what he was using it for. The huge red cloak reached all the way down to his stirrups, its unfamiliar weight dragging at his shoulders. How on earth did a knight get used to fighting with one of these things hanging from his back? It seemed determined to work itself under his saddle and strangle him. 

At least there were no bloodstains left on it. Wulf had taken care of that for them, and there was no sense in betraying his own nervousness to his men. They would follow him as long as they sensed he was confident, and as long as they believed he could lead them to riches and survival. 

Wulf, of course, followed him because he was Wulf and Cully was Cully. He would follow Cully anywhere, provided Cully only led him where he wanted to go. 

Below, at the bottom of a fallow field, lay a small village. The morning sun smiled down on it. Lines of smoke bled placidly from chimneys, and a pair of roosters crowed in avian contest. He could see people in the ploughed fields beyond, standing upright, pointing arms toward the road, and beginning to move towards the houses. They were abandoning their fieldwork to share in the news. _Knights! Look! Knights on the road!_

“Right,” Cully said to the riders behind him. “In and out, snatch the tax money. In three months we'll be in Normandy, drinking calvados and figgling with pretty Norman girls. Aye?"

“Aye!” Dinadan and George punched each other’s fists confidently. 

“What’s figgling?” Mal asked, but the others ignored him.

“Now, remember – we are knights of Camelot,” Cully warned. “We don’t do skirt-chasing, or drinking, or hitting, or screaming. They’re expecting knights, they have to see knights.”

“We know,” Din said. “Act like knights. Can’t be hard, mate - poncy bastards.”

Cully didn’t reply, but kneed his new horse into movement. The horse flipped its ears resentfully – it knew very well he was no knight – but it got moving, and a moment later they were all riding at a dignified walk down the lane towards the centre of the village. 

He jerked up his rein at a scream, and then relaxed. It was a child, running out from the hedge along the road. 

“Knights!” the grubby little thing screamed. There were more of them springing out from the hedge, all screaming at them and running alongside their horses. Cully’s horse seemed to tolerate the shrill sounds, and kept plodding as if it was used to a screaming escort, but when he turned in his saddle he saw Iorik take his hand away from his sword-hilt and drop it back to his thigh. 

“Knights! Knights!” the children screamed, some of them actually reaching up to touch their horses. 

Wulf dropped his empty hand back to his reins, his fingers relaxed, and grinned at him. Cully was struck by how boyish he looked without his beard. “We’re the knights of Camelot!” Wulf said, cheerily. “They’re glad to see us.” 

“ _There’s a first,”_ Cully said. 

“Are you here to kill the monster?” the first child screamed, from somewhere level with Cully’s horse’s knees. “Are you? Are you going to kill the monster? My Papa said if there’s a monster knights come to kill the monster.”

The call was taken up by the rest of them, and turned into a chant. “They’re here to kill the monster! They’re _here_ to _kill_ the _mooon_ ster! They’re _here_ to _kill_ the _mooon_ ster!”

Cully stared at his brother and raised his eyebrows. “Monster?”

“Eh, what’s in a name?” Wulf just shrugged his shoulders, still clearly amused at their reception. He seemed no more disturbed by the mention of monsters than ever, since in certain circles he was regarded as something of a monster himself. 

Din was grinning as well, his teeth white, but the rest of Cully’s boys looked tense, their lips twisting thinly. 

“Easy-peasy,” Cully said, as if the job was half done already. “See, what did I tell you?” 

They rode in with their escort, all the way into the heart of the village, unchallenged, and the villagers were congregating ahead of them. 

People were spilling out of the hovels, stepping out of their kitchen gardens, out of pigsties. They were assembling placidly, but quickly – no panic here, only a keen eagerness to get to where the visitors were. Beyond the thatched roofs of the houses he could see other peasants, trotting down the fields towards the village. 

The village was centred, as many in this kingdom seemed to be, around a small tavern that was itself build around a well. Gods, but these Camelotians must like their mead. No temples or churches, but lots and lots of taverns. 

Cully drew his horse to a stop in front of the tavern, and heard his riders coming to a halt around him. He didn’t look around at them. 

_Don’t ask_ , he reminded himself. _Make your wishes known, and then leave them to get it done_. 

“Good people!” he announced, turning in his saddle. “I bid you greetings from Camelot. King Arthur is once again secure on his throne. The usurper has been defeated, and…” 

He was forced to break off his words as a hubbub of voices arose. 

They all seemed to have something to say about his news. Oddly, most of them seemed to be pleased about it – he saw grins and nodding heads all around him. As if Arthur’s restoration had something to with them, personally! There couldn’t possibly be much difference between one king or another to these people, he thought, sourly; but perhaps these people took their ruler’s squabbles as their own. 

He waited until the noise died down, and decided on the spur of the moment to change his prepared speech, from hectoring them to rousing them. “I will carry your appreciation back to King Arthur personally. He will be pleased to know that you are pleased!”

That went down well, too. 

“The usurper has been defeated, overthrown, and her armies destroyed.” And his own little band of mercenaries had been destroyed with them, and for the thousandth time he cursed Helios, and his own stupidity for allying himself with him. Gods damn Helios and his grand plan, leading them all to disaster. He bit down a mouthful of sorrow at the memory - it would not do his plan a bit of good to get distracted now. 

There was an audience around their horses now. They were standing and listening. It had been a long time since peasants had done anything around Cully except hide their women, bury their coins, and sulk intensely. 

“The usurper has left a trail of destruction and damage in her wake. Camelot will take much time and work to restore to her glory. King Arthur calls on every man and woman to do their duty. Camelot needs every ounce of strength she possesses! And that strength is here, good people, in this village, and in a thousand others.”

They seemed even more pleased by that. Then again, Cully had not mentioned the magic words yet: _Tax. Collection. Early. Now._

“You tell King Arthur the people of Greensward are willing to do what he needs us to do.” It was a wrinkled old man, just a few points to starboard of Cully’s horse’s head. He had a long drooping moustache and wiry grey eyebrows that wandered out from his brow as if they were trying to escape. He scrunched up his face, so that his eyebrows seemed to wriggle towards each other. “If Camelot needs every hand, we’re truly blessed that he sent you. We could have borne the monster until he had a spare hand, you know. We’ve seen ‘em before. We’re truly grateful, truly, that with everything else on his plate he still saw fit to send you.” 

“They’re here to kill the monster!” one of the grubby children squealed, jumping up and down. 

Oh Gods. He was going to have to find out more about this monster if he wanted to steer around it. 

Well, he supposed, it couldn’t hurt these people if he promised that Arthur would see to this monster of theirs. It wouldn’t break their cheerful little hearts to bend the truth just a little bit. Arthur undoubtedly _would_ send knights, when – _if_ – he found out about it.

He stood up in his stirrups. “King Arthur takes monsters very seriously!” he said, pitching his voice to carry as if he was addressing a company. “A monster in one of his villages is as hurtful to him as a monster on the bastions of Camelot itself. Your monster will be dealt with, good people of Camelot, by the knights Arthur sends in his stead to defend you all!” He threw his hand around in an arc, gesturing at the tiny village as if it was a mighty metropolis. 

Another surge of satisfied noise buffeted his ears. Cully looked down at the wrinkled old man. He bit back the words, _You there! _before he could say it. “My good man. Can we put up our horses in this village?”__

“Of course, my lord, of course. And you can lodge here in my tavern. We’re making room for you as we speak. We’ve hot food ready as well, and mead. Everything m’lord and his knights need for your quest, we can give you.”

“Excellent,” Cully said, and kicked his feet out of the stirrups to dismount.

………………………………….

An hour later, they had all eaten, and drunk their fill. The tavern was small and dark, but the food was plentiful. Rooms with real beds! Hot food! Mead! Life was good again. Life was usually simple for the rank and file. 

The villagers had tried to draw them into a celebration of their arrival, and perhaps might have succeeded if it was later in the day. Cully had persuaded them that it was too early in the day to feast, that they would celebrate after the monster was killed, and that his men – the knights – were exhausted from riding, and needed to be left alone to eat and rest. He would address the village elders in an hour, he promised them. At first they had been inclined to hang about staring at the ‘knights’ but after a while, seeing that nothing interesting was happening and that knights ate and drank just like anyone else, they drifted off back to their work. 

Cully found that the tightness in his belly, which had sat there since the disaster, was beginning to loosen – partly from sating his hunger at last, and partly from relief. _This is going to work,_ he thought, releasing a little of the dread that he had not allowed any of them to see. He sensed his simple plan coming into tactical reality around him. 

He looked around the table at his men. _Just five._ Three days ago he had commanded twenty-five, tough fighters all, an independent mercenary company - and now these five were all that were left. All that remained of a thirty-year career. _Burn in hell, Helios!_ he thought bitterly. 

Yet he realized that for the first time he felt that they were going to manage. He was going to get them all out of the shit he’d led them into. All was going to be well. They just had to keep the charade up long enough, and confidently enough, and no-one would suspect a thing. 

George lowered his mead tankard from his lips, his eyes following the old tavern-keeper as he crossed the room and went out of sight. “Must be nice to be a Knight of Camelot, if this is the reception you get everywhere you go,” he said. 

“Can’t be that bad being a peasant in Camelot, either,” Wulf said. “Not if this is the reception the knights get everywhere they go”

Iorik put his tankard down on the table, and pushed it away with the air of a man getting down to business. “Cully, my friend, so far so good, but I haven’t heard you say the word ‘tax’ yet.”

“Aye, you’re right,” Mal said. 

“Cheer up, I’ve got a plan,” he said. The tavern keeper was out of the room. He lowered his head towards them. “I’ve thought it all out. They were expecting us. So we find out which direction this monster is. We tell them Mal is here to collect the taxes, and that we’re going around to all the villages. Then we all ride out in one direction as if we’re after the monster, and Mal rides out in the opposite direction, and we meet up somewhere out of sight. Simple.”

“Why Mal?”

“He’s the only one who stands out,” Cully explained. He jerked a thumb at Mal. “No cloak, he’s in-coggonallito. In conganito. In…” 

“He’s _in disguise_ ,” Wulf rescued him. “And Mal’s the youngest – he can pretend to be a squire. ”

Mal had frozen at the mention at his name, and now he set the tankard down on the table with a smile. “What’s to stop me just taking it all and bolting?”

“It’s a long way from Aquitaine without you speaking any French, son. You want to go, go. Best of luck. Besides, even if you do, we can get more. You can’t.”

Mal shrugged. Din shoved his shoulder. “So there you are, Mal. You pays your money and you takes your choice, eh?” 

Mal shrugged again, picked up his tankard and drank. 

“It’ll work,” Iorik agreed. 

“This is mad,” George said. “The more complicated the plan is, the more things there are to go pear-shaped.” 

Cully glanced over Iorik’s shoulder to make sure the tavernkeeper hadn’t come back yet. “This is just a brief change of plans. This monster of theirs complicates things, but it’s only temporary. Next village, we go back to the original plan.” 

The tavern-keeper came back into the room, tottering over to the barrel of mead on the trestle-table. Cully turned around on his bench and called to him. “Henrik, my good man. It’s time we learned what you know about this monster of ours.”

The tavern keeper changed direction and came up to them. “I thought you would know?” he said. “We wrote what we knew in the letter.”

“We’d like to hear it again, if you can spare us the time to tell it,” Cully said. “Have you seen it?”

“Yes,” Henrik said. His lips quivered. “Most of the village saw it.”

“Tell us what you saw,” Wulf said. “Tell us exactly what you saw.”

The tavern keeper lowered himself to sit down on the bench at another table. His eyes went far away. “I saw it two days ago. The second time it was here.”

“It’s been here before?”

“Yes. Five days ago. When we wrote to you about it.” The eyebrows wriggled, as he wondered why Cully didn’t remember. 

“Go on.” 

“It was big,” Henrik said. “Big and noisy. I didn’t hear it at first, I was in here, and then someone ran in here and said, "Come see", so I went. I saw it from the well. It was on the hillside, up to the north. It had a cow. Widow Mullins’s cow. It was eating it. It was … well, it was a monster.”

“What did it look like?” Wulf said, sitting forward, his mead still held aloft in his hand, forgotten. 

“It had a head like a bird – like a bird of prey – but huge. Eyes like saucers, and a long sharp beak the size of this bench. And its body was shaped like a huge cat with a long tail.” 

Cully saw Din and Mal’s eyes go a little wide. 

“A lion?” Wulf questioned. 

“Not like a lion. I’ve seen one on a shield, once.”

“Real lions don’t look like the ones on shields,” Wulf pointed out. “A lion is really a big yellow-orange cat, with a long tail.”

“Then maybe it was a lion, then?” Henrik rubbed his chin. “It had the head of an eagle, and the body of a lion. And it had wings, huge feathered wings like a bird. Its wings were as wide as the road. As wide as this room! It stretched right across the road!”

“Of course it did,” Din croaked hoarsely. 

“It’s called a gryphon,” Wulf said. “There was one in Camelot before.”

“Aye,” the old man said, eagerly. “I heard the song about it when the minstrel came in last year! A gryphon, is it? And Sir Lancelot killed the other one, so you lads can kill this one! Gods above, that’s good news. Aye, that’s a load off our backs, and no mistake.”

“We can kill this one,” Wulf agreed. He met Cully’s eyes with a flick of his eyebrows. “Right, Sir Cully?”

“Right you are,” Cully agreed, a sense of foreboding creeping over him. Wulf sounded altogether too eager to meet this gryphon. Dinadan, sitting opposite him, looked as if the same thought had just occurred to him too, and for once he didn’t look as if he was about to crack a joke. 

“I’ll tell the others. And the King of Mercia can keep his bounty, aye? That’s to the King of Mercia,” he said, and snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Ha! We’ve no need for the King of Mercia with you fine young lads here.”

“What bounty?” Iorik asked, sharply. 

“The King of Mercia’s hundred gold sovereigns to kill this monster. It came from Mercia first, see. That’s what the messenger said. A hundred gold sovereigns to anyone who can bring him the monster’s head.”

A hundred gold sovereigns! You could pay your way to Normandy for five men with a hundred gold sovereigns. You could pay your way to _Araby_ with a hundred gold sovereigns! – and the King of Mercia was rich, no doubt that he was good for the money. A hundred gold sovereigns, and they needn’t go through this charade with the red cloaks at all! 

“Oh, _that_ bounty,” Iorik said, looking at Cully with a hungry eagerness. “That’s the last thing on our minds, right, Sir Cully?”

“Never fear, Father Henrik,” Wulf said, leaning over and clapping his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “We can deal with this monster. We’ll give it its death-blow for the glory of Camelot, and save the King of Mercia his money.” He bared his teeth at Cully in a sudden fierce grin. “Right, brother?”

“In the meantime,” George said, uneasily, “about this tax money…”

“Tax money?” Henrik answered. 

“Never mind the tax money,” Wulf interrupted. 

“Aye,” Iorik said, “Forget that we mentioned it.”

“Tell your elders that we’re riding out this afternoon in quest to slay this monster,” said Cully. “They have nothing to fear. We are trained fighters all, tough and battle-hardened, and we have the weapons to slay this monster. Tell your elders that.”

“I will do that, Sir Cully, I will do that,” the old man said. He got up from the stool and hobbled away, rubbing his hands together. “I will do that, I will.”

Cully knew he was going to have to do some quick talking as soon as he cast his eyes around the table. 

George leaned low over the table, and cast his voice even lower. “Cully …” he croaked. “Are … you … mad?” 

“I know what this is. It’s that cloak,” Din said, pointing at the golden dragon on Cully’s shoulder. “Either the cloak’s magic, or you’ve gone bonkers and think you’re really a knight of Camelot.”

“A hundred gold sovereigns,” Iorik breathed, greed lighting up his face. “Divided six ways – that’s sixteen-and-a-bit sovereigns each. Each!” 

“Think of what we could do with sixteen sovereigns each!” Mal agreed. 

“We can do this!” Cully said. “We’re not knights – eh, no. We _kill_ knights! The knights of Camelot ran like rabbits when they saw us coming. And besides, we’ve got _him_ ,” and he jerked his thumb at Wulf. 

“I can kill this thing,” Wulf agreed. 

“The knights of Camelot ran like rabbits, right. But then they re-grouped out of sight and came back to kick Helios’s arse,” Din snapped. 

George growled. “The King of Mercia wouldn’t be offering so much money if he thought it would be easy! This is mad, Cully. We have to stick with the plan. Hit a few villages, grab the tax money, get out!”

“As opposed to one big windfall all at once!” Cully tapped his fingertips on the table. “One big job, or lots of little ones.”

“Lots of little _safe_ jobs,” George said. 

“I can do this!” Wulf insisted. “It’s do-able.”

“A hundred gold sovereigns, George!” Iorik said. “Think how many little safe jobs you’ll have to do to get that much gold!”

“I didn’t think you were a chicken, George,” Cully said, jeering at him. “We’re scared of a little old lion with a birdie’s head, then, are we?”

“I’m not a chicken, I’m a survivor,” George said. “ _Your_ words, Cully, remember?”

“I’m a survivor too,” Mal said. “And I agree with Cully. What _are_ we scared of, here? A monster – or Arthur Pendragon’s vengeance? The longer we spend in Camelot, the more our chances of getting caught.”

“And I, for one, am a lot more scared of _that person_ in those caves in Ealdor than I ever could be of some monster.” 

They all went quiet for a moment, considering Wulf’s point. Wulf had saved their lives in Ealdor – all their lives. They were the only ones he had been able to convince _not_ to follow Lord Agravaine into the cave – the only ones who had believed him when he insisted that something worse than a dragon was down there, that death itself was down there. And whoever, or whatever, it had been that had killed Lord Agravaine, it was clearly on King Arthur’s side. Nobody wanted to stay in Camelot longer than they had to, lest they bumped into him, her or _it_ again. 

“Well, what the hell. I’ll go with you,” Din said, breaking the silence. “You’re mad, but at least you’re interesting. If push comes to shove, I’ll just run and hide under a bucket.”

“I think you’re insane,” George said. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not doing it.”

Iorik opened his mouth to protest, but Cully quieted him with gesture. “All right, George, you don’t have to. Ride out with us, and then take the North road, and cross the border. One rider can go where six can’t.”

“I’ll ride with you a little way, at least,” George said. 

Iorik shrugged. “All right,” he admitted. “It’s more gold for the rest of us.” 

"Twenty sovereigns each," Din said. "And then we can take a real job. With Aquitaine, maybe. Aquitaine was nice.”

“Or Bavaria,” Iorik said. “I've always had a thought of going back there."

“Prester John,” Mal said. “I want to join Prester John.”

“You’ll have to find him first,” Cully told him.

“You’ll have a bitch of a job finding him, since he doesn’t exist,” Din teased.

“He does too! He’s in India!”

“I want to retire,” Wulf said. 

Cully jumped and stared at his brother. “You … what?”

“I want to retire,” Wulf said. “Settle down. Put down roots. I’m tired of the road, brother.”

“Why retire when you can go looking for Prester John?” Mal said. 

“Doesn’t exist,” Iorik insisted. “Bavaria is the place!”

He would have to come up with a quick plan to keep them together, Cully realized, or his little band would split up in six different directions. Or … five, really, because if Wulf settled down, what would be the point of Cully still soldiering on by himself? 

He knocked his hand on the table, interrupting the growing argument about Prester John. “But that’s for later,” Cully ordered. “We cross that bridge when we get there! First, we go after this gryphon thing, kill it, chop its head off, and take it to the King of Mercia. Agreed.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Mal said, and they all raised their tankards. 

……………………………………………….

After they rode out of the village, red cloaks in place, and saddle-bags bulging with food and supplies, Cully reined back his horse until Wulf was alongside him. 

“You know what to do with this gryphon?” he asked. He hadn’t asked at all, just assumed that Wulf would be able to deal with a monster as if it was an incoming shot from a mangonel. 

“I think I do.”

“Oh, that’s promising.”

“No, really. I think I do. Remember what Lancelot told us? The knights of Camelot attacked the first one with lances. Which, when you think about it, is a really stupid way of attacking something with wings. Sure, when they get up to speed they can get a few pounds of pressure on the lance point – but they’re only going in one direction! The damned thing just has to jump over them and then it’s behind them – and you know as well as I do how long it takes a galloping horse to turn around. Stupid, stupid, stupid…” he shook his head. 

“You have a better idea, brother?”

“Of course I do. Arrows.”

“Arrows?” He looked over his shoulder at the other four riders – other three, really, since George had not changed his mind, and would leave them as soon as they were out of sight and he could switch red cloaks with Mal. “We’ve only four archers. Including myself.”

“Ah,” Wulf said, raising one hand from his reins and wagging one finger at him. “Arrows, spiced up with a certain little spell I picked up from a fellow in Cardiff. I haven’t had a chance to use it in combat just yet but I’m sure it will do the trick. And once we have it down with a few arrows in its bum, we can finish it off with good old swords-and- _Feorbearne_.” He held out his hand and at the word a little bolt of flame sparked momentarily on his palm. “And it’s new moon. My strength is as good as it gets. I wouldn’t take it on alone, or during the waning moon, but now, and spreading myself out between the four of us… This will work, Cully. This gryphon is as good as cash in the hand.”

“And then?” Cully asked. “Are you serious about settling down?”

“We’re not Mal’s age any more. I want to settle down, Cully.” 

Cully twisted his lips. “Hm. Hang the Sea Bitch across a mantelpiece somewhere? There’s a thought.” His hand caressed the hilt of the old sword. She was as cold as ice, as always. 

“The Sea _Witch_ ,” Wulf corrected him, fussily. “And we can’t hang her up on a mantelpiece. We have to put her back in the Goodwin Sands, to wait for her next owner.”

Cully grinned at him, and raised on eyebrow. “You realize, if we ride back to Dover with twenty sovereigns each, we’ll have made a profit of exactly thirteen sovereigns three shillings between us - over thirty years?”

“Twenty sovereigns each is enough to be comfortable. Bit old for marriage and babies, but I want to sleep in my own bed, get to know my neighbours, grow my own flowers.”

“Flowers?” Cully asked, incredulously. 

“You know what I mean. It’s been thirty years. We’ve seen the world, but what have we to show for it? And the world’s changing, there’s not going to be room in it for men like us for much longer.”

………………………………..

They said farewell to George, and rode west for the rest of the day, tracing the valley floor. They kept their eyes on the sky, alert for the sign of huge wings, but saw nothing and no-one at all. 

The road they followed ran down a meadow and then sank towards a band of trees. “We’ll camp in there,” Cully decided, pointing ahead. “There should be water in there, and grazing for the horses.”

The grass around them gave way to bushes, and they rode in under the trees. The trees were not too thick and not too dark here, not gloomy but shady. Soon they heard the sound of water rushing and burbling over stones, and saw a band of bright light between the trunks. A moment later the trees opened out around a glossy stream. 

Cully rode his horse out into the sunshine, and yanked his horse to a dead stop. Facing him across the stream were men on horseback. 

There were five of them. And four of them wore the bright armour and red cloaks of the knights of Camelot. They carried long lances – unpainted lances with sharpened steel tips; lances for battle, not for jousting. 

_Real Knights of Camelot. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shitfuckshit_ …

The other knights were in the process of walking their horses towards the stream, but at the sight of Cully’s men they too had stopped their horses and were staring at them. 

“Uh-oh,” Mal said. 

“At least our odds against the _gryphon_ just got better,” Din said and gave his odd little whinnying laugh. 

“What are we going to do?”

“The only thing we can do,” Cully muttered. “Brazen it out.” 

He lifted his rein and kneed his horse forward, straightening his pose in the saddle to something more like a knightly swagger, his reins gathered in his left hand and his right fist on his hip. He rode to the edge of the stream, until stones crunched under his horse’s hooves, and stopped. 

“Well met, Sir Knight!” he said, cheerily. 

The knights stared back at him. 

“Who the blithering hell are you?” demanded the knight in the middle of their little formation. He was a young man, blond-haired, with a broad face and an arrogantly-boned nose. He moved his horse forward, stopped opposite Cully, and stared at Cully’s knights with an expression of consternation. 

“Who the blithering hell do we look like we are? ” Cully demanded back. He carried the Sea Bitch at his hip, ready to be drawn, although he was careful not to put his hand on her hilt just yet. Not while he could still bluff his way out of this mess. “We are knights of Camelot! Who the blithering hell are _you?_ ”

“You’re not knights of Camelot!” the knight said. His companions were beginning to put their hands on their sword hilts. 

Cully decided to match outrage with outrage, and inflated his chest. “How dare you say that! We were sent by King Arthur himself, to slay the gryphon!”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life!” the lead knight said, staring at Cully with an expression of mounting outrage. 

“Oh, and does King Arthur consult with _you_ every time he knights a new bunch of knights and sends them on a quest?” Cully demanded.

“Ooh, you’d be _amazed_ ,” chirped the young man who had ridden his horse alongside the blond-haired knight. He was no knight, this young man, but a loose-limbed youth in a shabby brown jacket. His face was crinkled up with impish delight, as if Cully was the most glorious creature he’d seen all day, and it was all he could do not to double over and laugh into his horse’s mane. 

“I’m sure I would be amazed!” Cully shot back at him. “I’m already amazed he’s sent two groups of knights to find the same monster. I’m amazed he has the resources for it, with everything else on his plate. I’m amazed neither of us has found the damned thing yet! But it’s not my place to ask King Arthur questions, is it? 

“Oh, no,” the peasant admitted cheerfully. “I wouldn’t dare.” 

Cully redirected his false irritation at the knight, his heart hammering in his chest. “And it’s surely not _your_ place to sit there and say, _who the blithering hell are you?_ in that tone of voice! King Arthur doesn’t need _your_ permission to make a bunch of new knights! Arthur does as Arthur pleases. _He_ called us knights, and on his say-so that’s what we are! How _dare_ you sit there and say, _Who the blithering hell are you?_ as if we do not wear your own uniform, sir! As if you have the right to decide who is and is not fit to be knighted by your own king! We are _new recruits, that_ is who the blithering hell we are!”

 _Shout at a knight, yes, shout at him – he’ll take it as knightly defiance, and it will never occur to him that a commoner would dare._

There was a moment of silence, and Cully’s heart drummed in his chest. For a moment both groups of riders stared at each other. The blond-haired knight’s eyebrows were almost hidden in his hair, they were raised so high. 

And then, to Cully’s astonishment, the blond-haired knight’s face slowly broke up in a wide grin, displaying white, slightly-crooked teeth. He rolled his head back and gave a loud honk of laughter at the sky. “Hah! Hah!” He wagged his head at it, as if he couldn’t believe his good fortune at meeting Cully, and was congratulating something up there for a most delightful turn of events. “You have a point, Sir Knight!” He twisted around in his saddle, to share his glee with the riders behind him. “Isn’t that so?” 

Cully nearly slid from his saddle in relief, but he held his back straight.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded. 

“Do you know who you are addressing?” the tallest of the knights asked Cully, a frown rumpling his broad brow as if he was deeply concerned for Cully’s sake. 

“I apologise, we are so new to the Knighthood that we only met those knights at court when we left there. I have a great many new acquaintances to make.” 

“Well, you’re in for a surprise,” said the peasant. “Because this _is_ –.”

“Sir Andrew,” the blond-haired knight introduced himself with a glance at his companion, and a finger jabbed forcefully at his own chest. 

The peasant hesitated for a moment, and then carried on as if he had not been interrupted. “Sir Andrew of Dollop Head; Sir Percival, sixth son of Lord Eldridge of Northumbria; Sir Gawain, seventh son of Lord Eldridge of Northumbria; and Sir Ellyan of the Forge.” 

Odd that the peasant made the introductions, as if he was one of the knights and not merely a go-fer. He reassessed the importance of the peasant. His clothes were shabby and hung off his narrow shoulders – but his horse was every bit as finely-bred as the knights’ horses. 

“And you are?” he asked the peasant. 

“Me? I’m nothing special.”

“This is Merlin,” Sir Andrew said, “Squire, servant, physician’s apprentice, and general idiot.” 

Cully lowered his head in a bow to them all. “Allow me to introduce my companions and myself. I am Sir Cullinan of Kent, this is my brother Sir Wulfric. This is Sir Malcolm of the Hilltop Bare, Sir Dinadan, and Sir Iorik of Copenhagen.”

Sir Andrew of Dollop Head was smiling at them, still shaking his head. “So. We’re here to kill the same gryphon, are we?”

“Those were our orders.”

“Oddly enough those were our orders too,” Sir Gawain said, flicking his long hair out of his eyes. “Direct from King Arthur’s own lips, and he was standing as close to me then as Sir Andrew is now.” He glanced at Sir Andrew, as if measuring the distance between them.

“Perhaps when he sent us he forgot that he already sent you?” Cully asked. “It is a forgivable mistake.”

“True,” Sir Andrew agreed, still smiling. “He’s only human, after all.” 

“I’m not sure…” interrupted Sir Percival. 

“It’s all right, Percival. I’m quite sure,” Sir Andrew said, waving down his objection with one hand. “It’s true what he says, King Arthur doesn’t need to ask anyone’s permission to make a few new knights. _Ex post facto, ipso facto, de facto_ , and all that … And we can use all the help we can get.”

 _Oh, hell, no,_ Cully thought. They weren’t going to spend any more time with these strange knights than they absolutely had to. Quite apart from arousing suspicion when it turned out they knew none of the poncy shibboleths of the noble classes, what would they do if they actually _found_ the gryphon? It would take a lot of fast talking to explain why the new recruits wanted to cut the monster’s head off and gallop off to Mercia with it. 

“It would be better to split up and search separately,” he said. “Two reconnaissance parties are more effective than one.”

“True,” Sir Andrew said, cheerfully. “But dispersing your combat force costs you in effectiveness when you do meet the enemy. There is such a factor as force concentration.” 

_Uh-oh,_ Cully thought. “Not necessarily something to be factored in when we’re talking about a mere beast.”

“It’s a rather _big_ beast, though, isn’t it? The other one was huge. It came down in the Great Square of the Citadel, and it was taller than the statue, and that’s twenty feet.” Sir Andrew lifted his reins and rode his horse forward, splashing through the fetlock-deep water, until his horse faced Cully’s. He leaned sideways from his saddle, and muttered to Cully’s ear, “Just between the two of us, it scares the hell out of me, and I’d welcome the extra swords even if you are rather new recruits. This creature is _big_.”

“You saw the first one?” Cully asked. 

“I was there when Lancelot killed it, and so was Merlin. It was huge. _Huge,_ I tell you,” Sir Andrew said. He lifted his eyebrows, as if encouraging Cully to make up his mind. 

“I fought alongside Lancelot in Benoic, a few years ago. He also said that it was huge.”

“Lancelot was the best of us all with the lance, but even he agreed that he was very lucky to strike it down when so many others failed,” Sir Andrew agreed. “We will need all our luck when we meet it again. Come, let us camp together tonight, in these lovely woods, and discuss the matter.” 

He had a friendly smile, this knight. And he mentioned Lance as if he knew him well. “Very well,” Cully decided. “We can decide whether to ride together or separately in the morning.”

“Excellent,” Sir Andrew said. He reined his horse around. “You won’t regret it. Merlin might not look like anything special, but he’s a fine cook. We can camp right here, and picket our horses on this grass.” 

Cully looked over his shoulder, and jerked a nod at his men. Then he started his horse following Sir Andrew over the stream. 

………………………………….

The real knights of Camelot were clearly accustomed to working together as a team. They set about setting up their camp with little fuss, and a very economical division of work. 

Fortunately, so were Cully’s own men, and the process by which any two groups of soldiers sets up a night-time bivouac is sufficiently similar that it aroused no visible suspicion. They were strangers still, and there was none of the joking and challenging that there would be between soldiers who knew each other, but the Camelot knights seemed to accept them, as friendly strangers at least. Cully could see the stiffness in his men, the close attention they were paying to their words and gestures, but he hoped that none of the strange knights noticed it. Or at least, if they did notice, that they put it down to a diffidence around strangers, and saw nothing suspicious in it. 

The tightness was back in Cully’s belly again, but he forced it down. To camp with a group of real knights of Camelot was risking everything – but refusing to camp with them would definitely bring on a challenge. He couldn’t risk a fight with real knights, in a fight where his enemy had endless reinforcements and he did not. He couldn’t risk losing any of them, couldn’t risk having wounded men to look after so far from any friendly face. This was a dangerous game, but it would be more dangerous to refuse to play it. He could only hope that all of his men carried on playing the roles they had adopted since last night. 

As the light faded and the western horizon turned to peach and gold, the horses were untacked, and the night’s bivouac was set up. Cully and Sir Andrew each gave orders that the two groups of horses were to be picketed separately, to prevent status squabbles between them, and the space between the two picket ropes became, naturally enough, a shared campsite. Pots and pans and bedrolls appeared as if by magic, and Iorik and Mal, as well as Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival, were sent off into the trees to fetch firewood. Ever since the arrival of the Dorocha, everyone in the whole of Albion took great care with their supply of firewood, and it seemed that the real knights were no different. 

In the meantime, Cully and Wulf set about brushing their five horses down and checking legs and hooves, as Sir Andrew and Sir Gawain began to do the same with theirs. Din opened their saddlebags, and compared their supplies with Merlin’s, and the two of them decided on what they would make for supper that would feed ten men. 

Cully sat down next to his saddle, aware of Sir Andrew’s gaze on him. He unbuckled his bedroll, and spread it out. He sat down in the centre of it, and watched Iorik and Mal walk up with bundles of sticks over their shoulders. 

“Put it there,” Merlin said, pointing next to the shallow hole he had scratched up in the grass. Iorik and Mal dumped their load and stood back. “Do we need to get more?” Iorik asked. 

“No,” Merlin said. “Ellyan and Percival are fetching another load. That should be enough.” 

_Ellyan and Percival,_ he said, as if he was one of them. 

He was not a knight, that was certain, but what exactly was he? _Physician’s apprentice,_ Sir Andrew had called him, and _general idiot,_ but what did that actually mean in Camelot? He was certainly doing a servant’s work, peeling something rapidly with quick swivels of his wrist as if the motion was utterly familiar from years of practice, but he spoke with a confidence that said to Cully that he was more than just a paid drudge. 

A footfall crunched next to him, and he looked up to see Sir Andrew standing above him. “So, Sir Cullinan,” Sir Andrew said. 

“Sir Andrew,” Cully greeted. 

Sir Andrew sat down on the grass alongside Cully, settling onto the ground in spite of his bulk and his armour with practiced suppleness. He reached into thigh-slit of his mail-coat and drew out a folded square of parchment. “Let us have a look at where we are,” he said, conversationally. 

_Knights have pockets like normal people?_ Cully boggled momentarily, but focused his eyes on the parchment which Sir Andrew was unfolding. It was a map. Cully shifted his seat, the better to see it. 

The golden dragon of Camelot had been stamped in the corner – proof, if he needed any, that these men were real knights of Camelot. The map showed this section of the kingdom – villages, roads, hills, streams, the outlines of woods. 

“We are here,” Sir Andrew’s fingertip tapped on a spidery blue line that wiggled from north to south. 

“We’ve just come from here,” Cully reached over and pointed at the village that they had left, to the east of the river. 

“We have come from here,” Sir Andrew said, and traced a line that zigzagged across the map from west to east, ending on the river. “Each village we reach has seen the monster, but it has moved on. It is as if the beast has just left. These creatures roam, as we learned from the first one. It is heading west, and it will probably continue to do so. It arrived before the war, and was last seen eight days ago.”

Cully tapped the village of Greensward. “This place has seen it twice. Five days ago, and again two days ago.”

“Twice, in the same place?” Sir Andrew pursed his lips.

“Maybe it’s found a place it likes?” Merlin asked, from where he sat still peeling industriously. “Maybe it wants to settle in and put down roots?”

Sir Andrew had made no attempt to shoo Merlin away from their discussion, Cully noted, and he had offered his opinion without hesitation, as if he was used to listening in on councils-of-war. 

Helios had met with the witch in private, even though technically Cully was his equal, as the commander of an independent company. Sir Andrew drew no such distinctions, clearly, even with a servant. 

“It gives us a direction to ride in, at least, after this zig-zagging around.” Sir Andrew folded up the map, and rested it on his knee. He said to Cully, “We are not the only people seeking this creature. You heard about Bayard of Mercia’s bounty?”

“It doesn’t interest us.”

“Ah, but it does interest me. That is to say, it interests King Arthur. Not that we need the money, but we do need to send a message to all comers that Camelot is in no way weak. I’m not such a fool that I don’t think our neighbours wouldn’t nibble a few valleys away, if they think they can.” 

“I would have thought that King Arthur would have more important things on his plate than a big cat with wings.”

Sir Andrew shook his head, his eyes still on the folded map. “Camelot fell by treachery, not force of arms. The Dorocha did far more damage than the Southrons did. And I think _both_ were Morgana’s doing.” There was a steel ring in his voice, and he seemed to notice it, because he shook his head, and raised his eyes to meet Cully’s with a slight smile. “But unless we want to fight another war, we need to send a message of strength. And nothing will say _We are strong_ quite as well as a knight in a red cloak galloping into Mercia with this beast’s head in a sack. Word will get around. That is why I was so pleased to see you and your companions. I can use your help.” 

“I am still not convinced that we should ride together,” Cully said. However much he might like Sir Andrew – and he was starting to think that here was a knight with whom he would be glad to ride – he was still a real knight, oath-sworn and full of aristocratic honour, and he was still a threat to Cully’s men’s lives. “Two sets of eyes on the sky have more chance to spot it than one. And I think, I really do think, that we can take down this beast all by ourselves.”

Wulf arrived, and knelt down next to Merlin, arranging Iorik and Mal’s firewood into a little pyramid, ready to light a fire. Merlin was dropping diced vegetables into a large pot, but he was also listening keenly. 

“Well, then, Sir Cullinan. I have a proposal for you. Ride with us, and help us take this monster. It doesn’t matter in the slightest _which_ knights of Camelot take the message to Mercia, as long as they wear the red cloak. You and your men may have the honour. You can even keep his hundred sovereigns, if you wish. Does that sound like a fair proposal, Sir Knight?”

Sir Andrew flicked up his brows, his blue eyes dark in the evening light, and Cully gulped. 

It did sound like a fair proposal. Half the risk for his men when they met the beast, in exchange for all of the reward? It sounded like a juicy temptation, but it also sounded like a suicidal risk. They had got away with it so far, but at any moment one of the other knights might realized that Cully’s knights knew nothing of knighthood’s secret rites and codes. They weren’t noble, and they couldn’t pass for noble for long. 

And yet … and yet … Cully couldn’t _stop_ , could he? Not now, not with all of them looing at him. Iorik and Mal were watching him, too, waiting for him to decide for them all. Iorik had been whetting his sword blade, slowly and rhythmically, but the sword was motionless now between his hands. If Cully had been by himself, he would have stopped, he would have turned around and buggered off and to hell with the money, _but they were all watching him_ , waiting for him to decide, and he couldn’t cower away from a challenge and still keep their respect. 

Shit. He should have abandoned his red-cloaks-tax idea when it first occurred to him, but it was too late now. This was a horse he could not get off until the ride was over…

“All right,” he said. 

Iorik shrugged his shoulders and started sharpening his sword again.

“Do you have a plan, then, Sir Andrew?” Wulf asked. “A plan to bring down the monster and slay it?”

“Sir Lancelot killed the last one with a lance,” Sir Andrew said. 

“He charged the foul beast right bravely with lance encouched and there-withal he smote the dread beast through its breast and brake his spear all to-shivered,” Merlin said, clearly reciting from fond memory. He grinned up at them. 

“Shut up, idiot,” Sir Andrew said. “And why are you listening in, anyway?”

“ _I’m_ cooking!” Merlin protested, pointing at the pot as if Sir Andrew couldn’t see it. “ _You_ decided to sit down next to me.”

Sir Andrew huffed through his teeth, and shook his head. “Sir Lancelot took down the first one with a lance. We will try that again, since it worked once.” 

“We were going to use bows,” Wulf said. 

“Bows?” Sir Andrew’s brows drew down, so that a line appeared between them. “This creature’s hide is like iron. No arrow you could send against it could pierce it.” 

“No arrow _you_ could send against it,” Wulf corrected him. “We have a different species of arrow in mind.” 

He held out his hand toward the little pile of sticks and kindling, and dropped his head forward in a posture that Cully knew all too well. Before Cully could protest, or do anything more than jump in shock, Wulf had muttered power into his spell. 

“ _Feorbearne_ ,” he rasped, and the gold fluttered across his eyes. The dusk light fell to night as the fire roared into life.

………………………………………

Merlin nearly shrieked with shock at the sudden flare of another sorcerer’s spell so close to his face. From his squatting position, his leg muscles jerked reflexively like a galvanised frog, but instead of shoving him to his feet ready to strike his flinch simply pitched him over backwards. 

He crashed over onto his back and sprawled on the grass, and then rolled himself over. He pushed himself urgently to his hands and knees, his hands digging into the soil, and then scrambled to turn himself around. 

_Arthur_ , he thought desperately, and brought his spell hand up as he turned around, his fingers crooked ready to cup a spell, ready to blast the false knight away from his king. 

Arthur had received as great a shock as Merlin himself, but even if his fear was greater than Merlin’s, his drill-honed reflexes kept him under control. He stood tall and silver-coated in the sudden firelight, his hand reaching across his body to his sword hilt. 

“What was that?” he hissed. 

Something twisted painfully in Merlin’s heart at the sight of his rocky jaw and the flicker of fear and outrage in his eyes, and he nearly cried out in despair. 

“Whoa, there,” Sir Cullinan was on his feet as well, equidistant to his brother and Arthur, hands outstretched toward both of them as if he could forestall a fight by flagging it down. Merlin looked over his shoulder and saw the other two false knights on their feet as well, eyes on Arthur, ready to defend their own commander.

Wulfric alone was still as he had been, still on one knee at the fire. He looked up at Arthur, looming above him with one hand around his sword hilt, tilted his head sideways and smiled slightly as if he did not see that sharp steel death was heartbeats away. 

“That was our best hope of bringing down the gryphon,” he said. 

There was the pounding of feet, and Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival broke into the firelight from the sudden dark around them. They sprang to bracket their king, supporting him.

“What’s going on?” Ellyan asked, and Merlin could see his eyes flicking between Arthur and Cullinan, measuring distances. 

“That was magic,” Arthur hissed at Sir Wulfric, ignoring Ellyan. 

“I have magic,” Sir Wulfric agreed, without moving or taking his eyes away from Arthur. 

Arthur’s jaw jumped, and in a single sweeping movement the magnificent sword was out and around, the firelight flickering across the impossibly bright steel as if it was glass. He took a step back from Wulfric, putting himself backward to lunging distance. “You have magic,” he accused. 

Cullinan drew his own sword, a blade that tingled against Merlin’s skin with its own magic. He stepped forward. “Sheath your sword, Sir Knight,” he barked. “Threaten my brother, and you will fight me first.” 

Swords rasped all around, as the other four knights drew their own weapons. 

Steel was drawn, and stiff aggression bristled. Cullinan still stood, guarding his brother, facing Arthur, who had Ellyan and Percival at his back. Behind Cullinan, Malcolm and Iorik stood ready, waiting for his lead. 

Merlin, alone, lay forgotten in the shadows, in the middle, and the best placed to end all of this right now. He drew the shape of a spell in his mind, and crooked his fingers ready to strike. _Lunge at Arthur and die_ , he promised Cullinan. He had slaughtered dozens of men for Arthur less than a fortnight ago – he wouldn’t be any less of a monster for adding five more. 

The flames were glittering in Arthur’s hard eyes. “Your brother has magic,” he told Sir Cullinan. 

“I know that, he is my brother. Sheath your sword.” 

“I have magic,” Wulfric agreed, drawing Arthur’s gaze to him. “Get it into your head, and keep it there. We are all soldiers here, but magic is my weapon. Without me none of us will defeat that thing out there. Not ten of us, not a hundred of us. No arrow will pierce a gryphon’s hide, and as as for your lances? You haven’t a cat’s hair of a chance, and the odds are that you’ll all die trying.”

Arthur’s jaw was working, one jumping muscle tapping in his cheek, and his eyes darted between the brothers. Cullinan was frozen, his sword still extended, and the two knights faced each other like angry statues. 

“Arthur,” Merlin breathed, from his position in the grass, “Don’t. Don’t.” _Don’t make me kill them…_

Another pair of feet hammered up in the harsh silence, and Sir Gawain leapt into the light, to outflank Cullinan. His sword was already bare. “What’s the game?” 

“This man has magic,” Sir Ellyan said. 

“Oh, is that all?” Sir Gawain drawled. He sheathed his sword, and flicked his hair out of his eyes. 

Ellyan goggled at him in disbelief. “Did you perhaps not hear me correctly? I said, this man has magic.”

“Aye, I heard. So does my ma,” Gawain drawled. “Arth- _An_ drew, don’t be a twit, now, you hear? A drop of magic’s nothing to have a fight over.”

“Cully,” Wulf said. “Put your sword away.”

Cullinan shook his head, his eyes on Arthur. “Not until he does.”

“Cully, brother, put it away. These good knights are not our enemies. Five of us, and five of them. There will be no winners, we’ll just butcher each other to no purpose. I have lost too many friends already. Put your sword away, brother.” 

Cullinan glared at Arthur. Then, slowly, very slowly, Arthur put the point of his sword to the lip of his scabbard, and slowly, slowly, he slid the weapon away. He took his hands off the weapon, and opened his palms toward Cullinan. 

Merlin let his magic sag away again. He heard me, he thought, weak with relief. 

“Iorik, Mal. Sheath ‘em,” Cullinan ordered over his shoulder. He copied their movement, and at a sidelong movement from Arthur, Ellyan and Percival did likewise. 

Wulfric and Merlin were the only ones on the ground, but unlike Merlin who sprawled, forgotten on the grass, Wulfric was the centre of attention. _Give that man his due,_ Merlin thought, _he has a nerve_. 

“You have magic,” Arthur said again, but his tone was different, asking for confirmation and not accusing. 

“I do,” Wulfric said. “I have had it since Cully and I were twenty-three. I’m not the strongest around, nor the wisest, nor the most educated, but I manage, and I know my strengths. You can’t take this gryphon down by yourselves, but neither can I.”

“We took down the first one without it,” Arthur said. “We can treat this one the same way.” 

“Yes,” Cullinan agreed, “And how many good knights did you lose the first time? How many of us here tonight will die trying, without Wulf?”

That was a point that would strike hard on Arthur, Merlin thought, and indeed he saw Arthur flinch. He had lost good friends that night. 

“All our swords, combined with my magic, can bring this gryphon down,” Wulfric said. 

Arthur was beginning to look at Wulfric as if was a man again, and not a demon in human form. That was always a good sign where Arthur was concerned – humanity usually won out against the letter of the law.

“You can do that?” Arthur asked. 

“I can enchant all of our weapons with a spell that will let them pierce the hide of a magical creature. Magic draws to magic, and magic yields to magic. The only problem is that I can’t do it by myself.”

“Magic is illegal in Camelot,” Arthur said. 

“Pfah!” said Gawain. 

Arthur’s eyes ran over them all. 

Sir Percival shrugged his shoulders. “It’s your call, S- Sir Andrew.” 

Arthur sighed. “If my father knew I was thinking about using magic to kill a monster, he would roll over in his grave,” he said. “He would think the loss of lives was a lesser evil than the use of magic to save them.”

“If your father’s in his grave, he won’t know about it,” Cullinan said. 

“It is your choice, whether you ride with us or not,” Wulfric said. “If you want no part in it, we’ll go our separate ways in the morning. You can try your plan, and we’ll try ours, no harm, no foul.”

Arthur’s eyes ran around all of them again, and then, as it tended to do at moments like this, his gaze reached Merlin’s. 

Never, ever, would the king show a single sign that he was asking Merlin’s opinion – not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash, not in front of the knights, never in front of strangers – but his gaze locked with Merlin’s and lingered there for a long moment. 

The moment was long enough for Merlin to give the tiniest of nods. 

“I cannot, in good conscience,” Arthur said, slowly, “turn away five extra swords and the chance to avert bloodshed. I don’t like magic. It makes my skin crawl. But I can’t risk the lives of men I love like brothers for the sake of my own squeamishness, and I can’t endanger any more of the innocents in these villages if we should fail. My father could do that, but I am not him, for good or ill. We will ride together, until this gryphon is dead.” 

“Good,” Sir Wulfric said. “And in return, I’ll make you a promise. On my honour, none of my magic will be used on you, or against you, or against any of you. You have my word as a sorcerer of the right-hand path. And when I do use it, I will give you a warning first so that you don’t get a fright.”

Arthur frowned at his words, but nodded. “Glad to hear that,” he said. 

“On that note,” Sir Cullinan said, and he turned on his heel. “Dinadan!” he called. “Come in!” 

For a moment nothing happened, and then a figure formed up from the dim light beyond the fire. It was the tall, skinny one, Dinadan, carrying his longbow, his quiver over his shoulder. He cleared his throat, and set the bow and quiver down against his saddle with an apologetic air. 

“How long were you out there?” Arthur asked. 

“Er,” Dinadan hesitated, and his eyes slid to Cullinan’s. “Long enough that I had a shaft aimed at your spine, Sir Andrew, from the moment you stood up.”

“Well!” Arthur said. To Merlin’s surprise, this didn’t seem to bother him at all. He tipped his head back and smiled at them all, flashing his teeth as if he was pleased to have met them. “You _are_ a soldier, truly. It’s always easier to ride into battle alongside professionals.” 

…………………………………..

And that seemed to be that, Merlin thought to himself, a little later. How simple life was, when you were a knight. Somehow, against all the odds, there were now ten of them, going against this monster. 

His friends had this side of the fire. Sir Cullinan’s men had the other. Merlin sat in the middle, between them all, placidly stirring his pot like a stage witch. He breathed a few words over it, as if cursing under his breath, holding his magic tamped down to as low as possible. The spell that he had woven into the matter of the pot came to life, and did what it was intended to do. 

The two groups of men did not quite chat with each other. Almost, but not quite, but at least the overt aggression was gone. Ten men were sitting in a circle, waiting for Merlin to work a small miracle and feed ten men out of a pot large enough to feed five. They weren’t talking much to each other, just watching with a tense patience. 

The tensions were starting to get to Merlin as well. He sat quietly, turning the long ladle in the pot for form’s sake, but he rehearsed in his mind a pattern of magic for knocking his own friends unconscious, if he had to leap to his feet to defend them all. 

The only exceptions were Dinadan and Sir Gawain, who were engaged in a game of Find The Lady. 

Sir Dinadan had taken a glass bead out of his pocket, and began practising sleight-of-hand tricks. He challenged Gawain to guess where he had hidden The Lady, and Sir Gawain had taken up the challenge with an eagerness that brought a frown from Arthur. Their personal game was made unique by the fact that each quickly recognised in the other another master player of the ancient game. Their version of the game was composed of guessing in which palm the other had hidden the pebble, and critiquing each other’s form. 

They were really good, Merlin thought, both of them; and he wondered what they would do if _he_ reached in and stole the bead. He hadn’t used his powers for his own amusement since Ealdor… 

But here they were, all ten of them, waiting for Merlin to make supper, and while they weren’t bosom friends, they weren’t actually killing each other either. 

And above all, Arthur had, for now, agreed to tolerate Wulfric’s magic. 

Merlin wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. There was an unhappy little knot in his belly at the thought that it had been a stranger, not Merlin, who had first looked Arthur in the eye and declared _I have magic,_ without a sign of fear. 

And besides, Arthur had agreed to ask the ‘old sorcerer’ for his help as well, once, and look how well that had turned out. It had been a disaster. It seemed as if Merlin ended up killing somebody or making things worse, no matter what he did, as if his magic itself had turned against them. 

But on the other hand, Arthur had agreed. He agreed! He had sheathed his sword, and he had agreed to Wulfric’s suggestion, and that was good news. Any lessening of Arthur’s paranoia was a good thing for Merlin, because every sign Arthur was given that magic was not evil was another step toward the day he could accept Merlin’s magic as well. 

There was a footfall close to him, and Arthur sat down on his heels close to him. Close enough to speak in undertones, but not so close that it seemed like they were scheming. Arthur had taught him how to have private conversations while in the public eye – don’t look like you’re whispering, and never frown. 

“Supper is not ready yet, so don’t ask,” Merlin said. 

“Smells good.” Arthur’s blue eyes examined Cullinan over the fire, where he sat next to his brother, checking their arrows. “Am I doing the right thing?” he asked. 

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” Merlin said. “None of us knows, it’s a complete mystery to us all. So, what _are_ you doing, Sir Andrew of Dollop Head?”

“I’m not sure. Trying to kill that gryphon before it starts killing people. And I think I’m about to use magic to do it. I must be mad.” He shook his head, gazing into the fire with an amazed expression.

“You must be mad,” Merlin agreed, giving his stew ladle a turn in the stew. “You’re just going along with whatever Sir Cullinan is doing. He’s not a knight of Camelot, as you know very well. He could be here for anything.”

“I know that. But he says he knew Lancelot.”

“A lot of people knew Lancelot. Doesn’t prove anything. That horse Sir Malcolm is riding – I recognise that horse. That’s Sir Griflet’s horse. And Sir Griflet was killed…”

“On his way to take a letter to King Lot, I know, when Helios invaded. But … the war is over, Merlin. Morgana has gone, Helios is dead. I don’t know why they’re here, but I know why I’m here, and it’s not for vengeance. They’re either a group of Helios’s survivors, or they’re Mercians. Whoever they are, if they want that hundred gold sovereigns, if they’re willing to earn it, they can have it. The war is _over_.” 

Merlin sighed. He recognised the signs of Arthur in an introspective mood – the distant gaze, the pursed lips. He was beautiful when he brooded, but he was also sometimes stupid. Merlin didn’t need another sudden fit of self-doubt from the King. 

There was a whoop from Sir Gawain, and a groan from Sir Dinadan, drawing Merlin back to the present. 

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Merlin asked. 

Arthur shook off his gloomy look, and raised his head with a faint smile. “Are you thinking, Oh God, Oh God, now there’s two of them?”

“You win!” 

Arthur smiled, but the smile faded a little too quickly. 

Arthur was harder to read, these days. The grouchiness of the last months might have faded, but his new reserve had not. Ever since they had retaken the castle, Arthur had been … thoughtful. Not unhappy, not sulking, not displeased about something, but rather as if there was something going around and around in his mind that he was struggling with. Arthur had stopped broadcasting every thought that came into his head. 

It was probably a good thing, for his own sake, but Merlin sometimes missed it. He was sure that Arthur still trusted him, sure also that Arthur loved him in his own way, but the open-hearted, loud-mouthed lout who had blurted his opinions all over the city was gone for good. Agravaine had seen to that. 

Perhaps the marriage wasn’t going to well? But if that was the case, Gwen would have been showing the same signs. The only distress she had shown was when her new husband announced that he would lead the quest to slay the gryphon himself, in the middle of their honeymoon.

Perhaps it had something to do with the Dragon? Arthur knew that Kilgharrah was alive, knew that he had struck and slaughtered dozens of men in Ealdor, but he had said nothing about it. 

Perhaps it had something to do with Lord Agravaine, found stone dead in the tunnels, but he had said nothing about that either.

For that, Merlin was deeply glad. He had killed so many men, both through the dragon’s assistance, and personally. Those deaths weighed on his mind. He was afraid that his guilt would show on his face, that if Arthur questioned him too deeply, and gazed at him too closely, he would somehow see in Merlin’s eyes what he had done, and what he was capable of doing. 

Those deaths weighed on his mind – not only because the deaths of so many had marked a sudden growth in his strength, but because it had been so _easy_. He hadn’t even seen their faces. He’d simply pushed them all off into Death with less effort than it would take him to push over a tree. They had been his enemies, true, but sending the whole lot to their doom without even taking a deep breath – it had been so easy. Monstrously easy.

Arthur might have killed that many in battle, but every man Arthur faced had held a weapon and had at least had a fighting chance. It bothered Merlin, to realize that he hadn’t lived up to _Arthur’s_ standards. 

There was another loud jeer from the game of Find The Lady. Merlin checked Arthur’s face, to make sure he was still staring into space and not looking at Merlin. Then he reached in to Sir Gawain’s upturned cup with his mind, and stole The Lady. He moved it to Ellyan’s pocket. Let them all puzzle over that for a while…

There was a footfall, and a sigh, and Sir Wulfric sat down on his heels next to Merlin. 

“You’re taking a lot of time and effort over supper,” Wulfric observed.

Merlin glanced up at him. There was a rather fixed expression on Wulfric’s face. 

“Ah, yes, but I would, wouldn’t I?” he said. “I’m going to eat it too. It doesn’t matter what I feed them, they’re knights, they’ll eat anything you throw at them. If I wasn’t eating any of it I could just toss a roasted rat in Sir Andrew’s direction as usual, but since I am eating it, _and_ cooking all of it all by myself, which let me tell you is a very important consideration on its own … well, I may as well please myself. They’ll eat anything as long as they don’t have to cook it themselves.” 

_“Listen!”_ Sir Gawain said, in the background. _“I haven’t got it! All right? It must have fallen on the ground. Maybe you’re sitting on it?”_

“They don’t mind?” Wulfric asked.

“Well, King Arthur complains a lot, but that’s because…” he leaned toward Wulf, “Between you and me, King Arthur is getting fat.” 

“Is he, indeed?”

“Oh yes. All those royal feasts and banquets and things. A bit of extra padding goes with the job.” 

Merlin looked at Arthur, who was narrowing his eyes and pouting with an expression that said that something was about to be thrown soon. Well, that was one way of cheering him up… 

But Arthur couldn’t throw things right now, without the strangers wondering why ‘Sir Andrew’ took the King’s reputation so seriously. He decided to be merciful to Arthur. 

“But since you are hinting… the answer is thyme, Sir Wulfric,” Merlin said. “Thyme, basil, and lots of rosemary. That’s my secret recipe.” 

“I will have to take your word for it,” Sir Wulfric said. He got up, and walked back to his brother. 

Arthur watched him go. 

“His magic doesn’t bother you?” Merlin asked him, without looking at him. 

“Oh, it does, Merlin. All magic bothers me. But … here we are.” 

“Right, here we are.” Merlin nodded, as if he understood what Arthur meant. “We’re all behind you, whatever happens. We’ll follow your lead,” Merlin told him. 

“Yes,” Arthur agreed, with a smile, and reached out a hand to clap it on Merlin’s shoulder. “Whatever else happens, that much I know.”

He got up and walked away to talk to Sir Ellyan, and Merlin watched him go, wondering if he should be worrying. 

…………………………………………..

Cully looked up, as Wulf walked up to him. Wulf folded his arms, and said, “Cully, will you come and take a look at Danny-Boy’s larboard hock? I want a second opinion about that bruise.” 

“Don’t mind,” Cully agreed, and got up, taking a flaming log from the fire to light their way. 

Sir Andrew watched them go, over the rim of his cup, from where he sat in low conversation with Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival. 

In the dark beyond the horses, Wulf led him toward his horse, and bent low by Danny’s hindquarters. “They’re not what I was expecting of knights,” he whispered. 

Cully held the torch aloft, as if lighting their examination of the horse’s hind leg. “Me neither. They don’t seem anything like the other nobles I’ve ever met.” Cully spoke to the horse’s hock. 

“If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if … How sure are you that these _are_ knights of Camelot?"

“Absolutely sure. Sir Andrew has a map with the royal crest ... and what are the odds of there being two groups of us, playing the same game? No.” 

“There’s something else that doesn’t add up. That man, Merlin,” Wulf whispered.

“He’s no servant, whatever flag he’s flying.”

“He certainly isn’t a servant. He’s a powerful sorcerer. He’s using magic, Cully. I can feel it.”

“What, really? Him?” He leaned upright to glance over the horse’s rump at Merlin. The peasant still sat by the fire, his back to them. His peculiar ears stuck out, and his hair tapered down the nape of his skinny neck like a little tail. “He doesn’t look like a powerful sorcerer!”

“Oh? What does a powerful sorcerer look like, then? Teach me, oh wise brother, that I may learn?” His brother managed to load a lot of sarcasm into a barely-audible whisper. 

“All right, there’s no need to bite me! What sort of magic?”

“He’s cooking a three hour meal in half an hour. He’s using a time spell, taking the inside of his cooking pot through time faster than the rest of us. Cully, listen to me – he’s using the level of magic that it would take me a lifetime to learn, and he’s using it to _make stew._ ” 

“Can’t be.”

“You wait for that stew, and tell me it tastes like it was cooked in thirty minutes.”

Now that Cully thought about it… stew was a rather ambitious meal to whip up from scratch in half an hour. He began to scratch his chin. 

“That man has serious power!” Wulf whispered. “And he’s using it to make stew! I ask you, what the hell is that about? _Stew_ , for pity’s sake! Who _uses_ power like that for something so _stupid?_ It’s the power of the universe, not a … a… God, why _stew,_ Cully?”

Wulf seemed more agitated by the misuse of his art than by the threat of a powerful sorcerer in their midst. “But when they saw your magic, they all panicked.”

“They don’t know about his magic.” 

“They must know. They wouldn’t drag a servant all the way out here, if they didn’t want him to use his magic against the gryphon.”

“I’d swear they don’t know. He’s making sure they don’t see anything he doesn’t want them to see.” 

“You saw.”

“I didn’t see it. I _felt_ it. Remember the Lady Morgana?”

Cully remembered. Wulf had _felt_ Lady Morgana, and something about her had horrified him. He’d panicked, and refused to allow Cully to mention his magic to Helios. “You said her magic felt warped.” There was no point questioning his brother more deeply than that … Wulf simply didn’t have words to describe what Cully would never feel. 

“This one’s magic isn’t warped. Thank the gods for that. Cully … remember the night we took Camelot? Remember chasing those knights down that corridor, and the flames jumping across the room at us?”

Cully wouldn’t forget that in a hurry. The churning bar of flame from the wall sconces had nearly taken his head off. “You said there was a powerful sorcerer with those knights.” It was one reason he had been so eager to follow Agravaine – between the stranger and the Lady Morgana, Camelot was not healthy for a lower-order sorcerer like Wulf. 

Wulf straightened his back, as if he was finished looking at his horse’s hind leg. He gestured with his head toward the fire. “I think we’ve just found him. Knights of Camelot, and a sorcerer riding with them.”

……………………………………………….

Supper was a success, at least, however it had been prepared. _Give that man his due_ , Cully thought, _he can really cook._ The meat slipped off the bone (rabbit, or he was no forager) and the thick sauce it was in had been soaked up by the vegetables, so that the whole meal was a hot, juicy perfection. It was a meal fit for a prince, not men on the march. He exchanged raised eyebrows with Wulf. Wulf was right. Not a thirty-minute meal at all. 

The knights, real ones and false, all settled back around the fire to eat, and for a while there were no words, as ten men sat inhaling their meal as fast as they could. 

“Good?” Merlin asked Sir Andrew.

“Mmm. Yes. Very good, thank you, Merlin.”

“Naah,” Sir Gawain said. “Too salty by half if you ask me.”

“Far too salty,” Sir Percival agreed. 

“Merlin makes everything too salty,” Sir Ellyan addressed the strangers directly for the first time. “He makes salty tea.”

“Aye, he just has to look at things and they turn salty,” Sir Gawain said. “Milk. Eggs. Strawberries. All salty. I remember a time when he and I were being chased by wyverns across a swamp, and all we had with us to fight them off was a brace of pheasants. So we lobbed the pheasants at ‘em to distract ‘em, and then we legged it off to a deserted castle. Well, there we were that night, safe as houses in that castle, and fast asleep, when there was a knock at the door. So I went to the door, and I said “Who’s there?” and a voice on the other side of the door said, “It’s the wyvern from this afternoon,” and I said, “What do you want at this time of night,” and it said…” he drew in a deep breath and pitched his voice plaintively high, “ _It’s too salty-y-y…_ ” 

There was a laugh, around that side of the fire – a rather longer laugh than the rather pointless tale called for, which told Cully that this had to be a running joke at Merlin’s expense. 

Merlin went a bit dark around the ears, just visible in the firelight, and he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “All right, very funny,” he said. He turned to face Cully’s men. “You know what this is? This is a meal fit for a king.” 

“I’d drink to that,” Din said to him, “if I had anything stronger than water to drink. Is there any more?”

“There’s enough here for one more bowl.” 

“I’ll take seconds,” Sir Andrew said, holding out his bowl. 

“I asked first,” Din said. 

Sir Andrew stopped short. “I outrank you,” he said. 

“I’ll challenge you for it for it, then.” 

There was an astonished gasp around the fire. “You’ll challenge me?” Sir Andrew asked, astonished, and then his eyebrows twitched upwards. 

“Aye, I throw down the gauntlet to you, Sir Andrew.” Din mimed pulling off a glove and throwing it down on the ground. 

“I accept.”

“On my terms?”

“On any terms!” 

“Excellent! I challenge you to a contest of singing!”

Cully, looking around, realized that for the first time, everyone was sitting up and following a single conversation. He silently blessed Dinadan’s professional training, which had taught him how to yank a disparate group of prickly strangers into a single audience. 

“A singing challenge…?” Sir Andrew said, doubting. 

“You did say _any terms._ Do you accept?”” 

Merlin, in the middle, held up a hand to each of them. “It’s a fair trade. A song for seconds.” 

“It’s not a fair trade – I can’t sing!” Sir Andrew complained. 

“We’ll take a vote on it instead,” Merlin said. “If he can sing, he can have it. If he can’t sing, you can have it.”

“Since when does this camp take votes?”

“Since King Arthur himself declared that no man in the Knights of Camelot was greater or lesser than any other,” Merlin said.

“Ah- _ha_ ,” Sir Gawain said, “And we were all of us witnesses to that! Let’s have a song.” 

“Let’s have a song!” Mal repeated. 

Here was a chance to loosen the stiffness of the camp a little further, Cully thought. His idea would either break the ice further, or backfire hideously. He stood up. “A challenge, Sir Knight!” he called to Sir Andrew. 

“ _You’re_ challenging me now?” Sir Andrew said, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. 

“I’ll add a wager. If Sir Dinadan is deemed to be able to sing by an audience of his peers – he’ll eat the stew and you’ll wash it out. If we all find that he doesn’t sing well, you can eat it and I’ll wash it out.”

“Ooh, that’s a steep one!” Sir Gawain murmured gleefully. “I like it!” 

“Hell, no!” Sir Andrew barked. 

“You refuse the challenge?” 

“Then the pot goes to Sir Dinadan by default, as Sir Andrew withdraws from the contest,” Merlin said, cheerfully. He picked up the pot held it out towards Din, and grinned at Sir Andrew. 

“And since when did _you_ become a judge of knightly contest, _Mer_ -lin?” Sir Andrew blasted at him angrily. 

“Since I cooked the stuff myself, it is mine to give to whomever I choose,” Merlin said serenely, not at all intimidated by knightly outrage. “My pot, my recipe, my choice.”

“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll accept that!” Sir Andrew said. He turned to Cully. “You’re on. I accept your challenge. If this audience finds that Sir Dinadan can sing, I’ll wash that pot.”

Din climbed to his feet, his tin bowl held in front of him. He looked around the fire at his audience, and dropped Cully a wink. “What shall I sing?” he asked. 

“How about the lay of Robin Hood?” Iorik suggested. 

“Too long, the stew will get cold. The song of Cuchulain!”

“No, that’s too tragic, sing something cheerful.”

“The Rose!” Sir Percival suggested. 

“Aye, the Rose! Sing the Rose!”

“Everybody wants the Rose? The Rose it is, then.” Din cleared his throat. “I was taught never to sing on a full stomach, nor yet on an empty one, but since I am singing for my supper I will make an exception.” He drew in a few deep breaths, straightened his back, and began to sing. 

Dinadan’s voice was a thing of beauty. He had always sung with both self-confidence and elegance, the confidence of a man who knows exactly what his audience expects, and knows that he can give it. He needed no accompaniment, either – he knew how to use his voice itself as an instrument. His voice spooled out onto the night air, a rich, deep ribbon of sound. 

“I think I’ve just been suckered into a contest against a trained minstrel,” Sir Andrew groaned, into the brief silence at the end of the first verse. 

Din flashed them a grin, before launching into the second verse. 

When the last long sorrowful note of the song was finished, Din rocked back on his heels and looked around at all of them. “So, what say you all?” he asked, grinning. “Can I sing, or not?”

“I think this man can really sing!” Sir Ellyan said, in tones of surprised pleasure. “Sorry, Sir Andrew, but my knightly honour demands the truth.”

Sir Andrew got to his feet, bowed to him with immense dignity, and said, “I withdraw from the contest. You have bested me, Sir Knight.” 

“Victory is sweet, Sir Andrew,” Din said. 

“I think you mean victory is too salty,” Sir Gawain pointed out, grinning up at Sir Andrew. 

“Now, hold on a minute,” Sir Percival said, “he didn’t say he could sing like that. This hasn’t been a fair trial.” 

“Not in the least,” Sir Andrew said. “The contest was whether or not he could sing. He didn’t bring anything else into it except the voice the Gods gave him. It was my lookout, and I didn’t ask. Merlin, dish this man his stew, and then give me that pot.”

Din handed Merlin his bowl, and Merlin ran his ladle around the inside of the pot to scrape out the last of his stew and drop it into the bowl. 

Then Merlin picked up the pot by its wire handle, and gave it to Sir Andrew, with a solemn bow. “Your forfeit, Sir Andrew.” 

Sir Andrew stomped off into the dark, without another word. Nobody followed him, but they all watched him go. His figure went off toward the stream and then hunched down at the water’s edge. They heard the sound of the sponge being dunked and squeezed into the water, and then the sound of scrubbing. 

Dinadan sat down on the ground again, and began ladling large mouthfuls of stew into his mouth. “Music needs fuel,” he told them, full-mouthed. 

“Let that be a lesson to you,” Merlin said. “Don’t go galloping around issuing challenges to knights you don’t know.”

“But issuing challenges to strangers is half the fun of being a knight!” Sir Gawain protested. “There’s no fun in issuing challenges to … Sir Leon, for example. I already _know_ he can knock my head off, so where’s the fun in finding out?”

“Knights,” Merlin sighed, shaking his head, as if they were too far beneath him even to try to explain to them what they were doing wrong. He began stacking the empty bowls. 

“Where did you learn to sing like that?” Sir Ellyan asked. 

“I was trained as a minstrel,” Din admitted. He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t worry about me, though. If there’s a fight I just hide under a bucket until it’s all over, and I can come out and get to work with a nice tune afterwards.”

There was more to it than that, Cully knew. The nicks along Dinadan’s blade had come there from combat, not chopping wood, but if Din didn’t want to tell how he ended up as a mercenary under another name, it wasn’t Cully’s place to open that history. “You’ll have to write a song about this quest of ours,” he said. 

“I’ll call it the Tale of Nine Knights, a Servant and a Gryphon.”

…………………………………………

Merlin got up, stacked all the empty bowls into each other, took a flaming log from the fire, and wandered after Arthur. The sounds of sloshing and scrubbing, and the occasional muffled grunt of irritation, came to Merlin’s ears from the direction of the stream. 

He grinned to himself in the dark. Arthur was washing in the dark. He walked carefully in the night, following the sounds to where Arthur hunched over by the edge of the stream. 

Merlin sat on his heels next to his King, so that the knees of his trousers didn’t get damp, and set the flaming light down on the ground, pointing uphill so that it didn’t burn out. He set the bowls and spoons down on the ground in front of him, just short of the water. 

Arthur didn’t wait for him to speak, but launched into a complaint even before Merlin had reached the ground. He’d clearly been brewing it for a while, waiting for Merlin’s ears to hear it. 

“It would be bad enough even if there wasn’t a minstrel here tonight! I am going to be a laughing stock!”

Merlin took a soothing tone of voice. “It won’t be that bad. Remember the story about Lancelot and the lady with the kite in the tree, and how different it is with what Lancelot said actually happened?” 

“Huh. I am paying the price of my own arrogance, Merlin. How hath the mighty fallen! That will teach me, Merlin – _that_ will teach me not to go challenging strangers to contests.” 

Merlin grinned. “It would help if you had remembered to take a light, Sire,” he said. 

Arthur huffed his irritation, but a moment later his teeth gleamed in the dark. “It would help if I remembered to take the soap, too, but I’m damned if I’ll go back and get some, with all of them watching me.”

“Well, never fear. Merlin’s here, and I have a light _and_ the soap. Here.” He handed the soap to Arthur, picked up his bowl, and dipped it into the stream to get some water in in. In the firelight, the stream looked black. He poured the water out, and dipped it again. Arthur had their only sponge, and he was working away with it at the inside of the pot. 

“Well. At least it’s broken the ice,” Arthur said, sloshing soapy water noisily into the pot and sluicing it around and around in a circular motion. “We can’t work as a unit if no-one is willing to open their mouths and talk.”

“Yes,” Merlin agreed, keeping a straight face. “At least you haven’t made a fool of yourself for _absolutely nothing_.” 

“Hah. Who in Camelot would imagine their King washing out a stewpot like a servant? 

Arthur had washed a pot before. He had washed their dishes too, during their flight to Ealdor, but Merlin was sure he would never believe it. Merlin would cherish that memory for the rest of his life. Without his iron will, and beyond any thought of his rank or his royal privileges, Arthur had turned out to be as sweet as a duckling. 

“How is that pot?” Merlin asked.

Arthur held the pot out toward him, so that he could see it, and they both inspected the inside carefully by the light of the torch, putting their heads together to see the inside. “I think that’s all right,” Merlin agreed. He reached out and took the sponge out of Arthur’s hand. “My turn.” 

Arthur did not reply. He clapped a hand on Merlin’s shoulder, pushed himself to his feet, and walked back to the fire. A moment later, Merlin heard him say in ringing tones, “Gentlemen! I have paid my forfeit. Our adjudicator has decreed that the pot is now clean, and my honour is restored.”

Arthur’s embarrassment was a thing between the two of them alone, it seemed – the King would not let on to a soul that he was anything other than good-humoured and gracious. _Embarrassed? Me? Not at all!_

The news met with acclaim, and a call from several voices that Sir Dinadan should mark the occasion with another song. He obliged, and a moment later Merlin heard his voice lift up in the first verse of the Lays of Robin Hood. 

Merlin scrubbed the sponge against the soap, and then began scrubbing out the inside of his bowl. 

There was another crunching pattern of footsteps, and he turned, expecting to see Sir Gawain, but it was the stranger, Wulfric. 

“Oh. Hello,” Merlin said. He rinsed the bowl in the stream, and set it down on a clump of grass behind him. 

“You and I need to have a chat.”

“Oh, we do, do we?” His stomach tightened. This man was Merlin’s opposite number, and if Cullinan and his men intended harm, this man would also be Merlin’s enemy. 

“Your friend over there is a good sport, but none of them is what I expected. Tell me, is he really a knight?”

“No,” said Merlin, shortly. He still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this man’s declaration to Arthur. _I have magic_ was supposed to be his great reveal, not this stranger’s. He kept his eyes down, and began scrubbing the next bowl. “Only one of them back there was born to be a knight, and it’s not Sir Andrew.”

“I thought not. They don’t act like any other nobles I’ve met.”

“The Knights of Camelot don’t need to be noble at all, to become knights,” he said, feeling slightly offended. “It takes more than just noble birth these days. King Arthur’s standards are not those of his father.” This bowl was finished, and he started on the next. 

“There’s no need to jump down my throat,” Wulfric said. “We’re on the same side. We’re the same, you and I.” 

“No, we’re not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Come, now, don’t try to deny that you have magic. I saw your little game with the stew. You and I are the same.” 

Merlin could have groaned aloud. His secret was out. He knew the stew had been a mistake, but he had already been committed to the recipe before he’d found out about Wulfric’s magic. 

“We are not the same,” Merlin said. “I don’t know why you’re here, and I don’t know what you want, but I am warning you – make one threatening move toward any of my friends, and I will destroy you. Be careful, Sir Wulfric. I’ve killed stronger sorcerers than you.” 

And he’d killed some who were not sorcerers at all. The poor fools who had rushed into the caves of Ealdor after Agravaine, for a start. He shook that grim thought away. 

Wulfric should have been worried. He should have been challenged by Merlin’s threat, but his voice in the dark was calm and no louder than before. “Then let me warn you in return. Be careful, Merlin. I’ve _survived_ stronger sorcerers than you.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I might not be as powerful as you, but I didn’t get as old and wily as I am by being stupid. Make one threatening move toward my brother, or my friends, and I won’t destroy you. I’ll just walk in there and tell your friends what you are. That’s your Achilles heel, isn’t it? My word, that’s quite a weakness you have there!” He sat back, and his teeth gleamed in the dark. 

Merlin winced, despite himself. “You wouldn’t dare!” 

“I won’t, unless I have to. I’m not here to hurt any of your friends. I’m not a threat to you, or any of them.”

“I’ve hardly met one of my own kind who hasn’t tried to hurt them.”

“Then I’m very sorry for you, but I’m not one of them. I’ve defended my brother from sorcerers and monsters in a hundred fights between here and Jerusalem. I don’t want any more enemies, and I’m tired of fighting. All I’m here to do is help my brother glue his dignity back together again, and then I want to retire. He wants this gryphon, and I’m going to kill it for him.” 

“No, you won’t,” Merlin said, reluctantly. 

“What do you mean, I won’t?”

He could almost feel the man’s eyes narrowed, even though he wasn’t looking at him. “You aren’t strong enough,” he explained. 

“How do you know?”

“I fought the first one myself … I know what it took to bring it down. It will take more strength than you’ve got. I saw what an effort _Feorbearne_ was for you.” 

“Sir Lancelot took down the first one with a…”

Merlin shook his head. “Sorry, no. Sir Lancelot’s lance, accompanied by my spell. I was there. You won’t do it without me.”

Wulfric huffed a grunt of laughter. “You’re very arrogant, for such a young man!” 

He thought about that. “Yes,” he admitted. “Probably. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.”

“Oh, you and my brother are going to get along just _beau_ -tifully.”

“I know my own strength. I know what I can do.”

“Then we do have something in common. I know what I can do. You have more strength than me, but I have more freedom than you. Perhaps I can’t bring down the gryphon – but how are you going to do it yourself without them noticing?”

“I’ll think of something,” Merlin said. “I always have before.”

“This time you don’t have to! We can work together, much better than we can work apart. I can work magic in front of them, openly, and you can’t. And if you’re really as strong as you think you are, you _know_ I’m no threat to your friends. Working together will benefit us both.” 

He stood up. “Think about that, and then give my your answer in the morning.”

Merlin heard his footsteps going away in the dark, and turned around, abruptly. “Wait,” he said. 

Wulfric turned, silhouetted against the fire a few yards away. Around the fire, the others were preparing for bed. Merlin saw Arthur, watching them from the other side of the fire with a rather strange look on his face. 

Arthur was getting harder to read, these days. He didn’t like the feeling that Arthur was keeping his thoughts from him. It was unfamiliar and worrying, the inverse of how things were supposed to happen between them. 

“Yes?”

“A proposal.” He tried not to let his voice wobble, as he took his gaze away from Arthur and looked up at Wulfric. 

Wulf came back, and knelt down on one knee. “Yes?”

Arthur couldn’t possibly hear him from this distance, but he pitched his voice low anyway and spoke quickly. “I have magic. But I don’t have their trust. Not the way your brother trusts you. I can’t tell them what I am – not yet.” 

“Why on earth not?”

“I just can’t. They’re not ready. But I have an offer for you. I’ll take down the gryphon, and I’ll make it look as if you did it, if… in return…if…” he ran out of words.

“If I do what in return?”

“If you talk to Sir Andrew about magic.”

“Talk to him about magic?”

Merlin found his words tumbling out. “He’s terrified of magic, he thinks it’s evil. Nobody in his whole life has showed him anything about magic except to try to kill him with it. Even his sister. I love him like a brother, but I can’t tell him about my magic while he thinks it’s evil. But he accepts you. If you can talk to him about it, and show him, even a little bit, that magic is not evil … show him that you and Cullinan are all right with your magic … then I’ll kill the gryphon for you.” 

There was a silence. He could hear Wulfric’s breathing – heavy middle-aged-lungs breathing. “My brother knows my magic because he was there when it came to the surface.” 

“I was born with it. And I’ve had to hide it all my life. And I’m so tired of hiding it. I want to be able to show my friends who I really am. I want to show _him_ who I really am! Because he doesn’t know, and I can’t bear it any more. I’ll deal with the gryphon, and you can have all the credit. And you can talk to Sir Andrew about your magic on my behalf. That’s my deal. Take it or leave it.” 

He gulped, hoping that Wulfric couldn’t see his desperation. This chance might never come back again! Arthur had sheathed his sword, he had sat down and eaten a meal with a sorcerer! He had another chance to show Arthur that magic was not evil – he could not let it slip through his fingers. 

He didn’t know what he would do, really, if Wulfric refused his offer. He couldn’t drive Wulfric away without a good excuse, and Wulfric had to know that. And he couldn’t threaten him without him threatening back. And what would Wulfric do, if he turned Merlin down? He might walk back there, and announce Merlin’s magic to the whole camp. All the cards were in Wulfric’s hands, if he only knew about it. The only card Merlin held was Cullinan’s desire for the gryphon. 

Wulfric looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “Very well. We have a deal. You’ll deal with the gryphon, and I’ll deal with magic.” In the dark, Wulfric’s hand came out toward Merlin. “I’ll shake on that.” 

Merlin gripped his hand and shook it, aware that his own hand was wet and soapy. “We have a deal,” he said, giddy with excitement. 

“What spell were you going to use?”

He leaned forward, and muttered his old friend. “ _Bregdan anweal gafeluc_.” He was careful not to press any power into the words, so that they were just words, and that nothing showed in his eyes. Arthur, he saw, glancing over Wulfric’s shoulder, was still watching them steadily over the fire. 

“That one doesn’t work, lad. I tried it, years ago.”

“It does work, but not if you’re holding the weapon in your hand. It needs to get up a bit of speed first. At least the speed of a galloping horse. You don’t need the spell to send the weapon, you need the weapon to send the spell – but it doesn’t matter, does it? I can do it.” 

“You’re strong enough for that? It’s a complicated spell.”

“I did it once, I can do it again.” 

……………………………………………

Was it true? Could it be? Cully watched, carefully, as the knights on the other side of the fire prepared for bed. 

Yes, it was. Each knight was unpacking his own bedroll, and settling himself down to sleep in on the ground. Not only that, but they seemed to be ready to sleep in their chainmail, with their swords close at hand. 

Weren’t they going to do the traditional knightly thing, and raise the usual elaborate tents, with their hanging curtains and folding furniture and boastful banners? 

Then again, they did have only one servant between the four of them. If they were to wait for Merlin to pitch four tents with all the trimmings all by himself, they wouldn’t get to sleep before four bells in the middle watch! Perhaps even knights could give way to common sense sometimes. 

They settled down with the easy companionship of long practice. Sir Percival and Sir Ellyan chose to sleep close together. Nobody seemed willing to sleep next to Sir Gawaine. Sir Andrew unrolled his blankets. It seemed the blond knight was a newly married man, because there was some gentle teasing about him becoming amorous in his sleep. Sir Andrew merely sat down in his blankets, with the smug smile of a man who is getting regularly and fulfillingly laid for the first time in his life.

Cully looked up as Wulf walked back out of the dark. He had already spread his own bedroll and blankets out, and he had taken Wulf’s bedroll off his saddle, and was beginning to spread it out for him. 

“Did you have a good chat?” he said, conversationally, as if Wulf had wandered off to discuss the weather. He rocked back on his heels, to let Wulf take over his bedroll. 

Wulf finished laying his groundsheet and blankets out on the ground “Very good. Poor lad. He’s very paranoid, but at least we see eye to eye about some things. I think I set his mind at rest.”

_“Poor lad?_ What’s this? I thought you said he was a wildly powerful sorcerer?”

Wulf lay down on his bed, and propped himself up on his elbow. “Oh, he’s that too, but look at him, Cully. He’s just a lad. How old is he? Eighteen? Twenty?”

Cully lowered himself closer to his brother’s ear. “Now is not the time for you to get all paternal, brother!” he hissed.

“We have an arrangement,” Wulf said, as if he hadn’t heard him. “He’ll deal with the gryphon, and I’ve agreed to talk to his friends about magic on his behalf. He needs help, the poor lad. He’s got himself into a pretty pickle.” 

“Now is not the time to nursemaid some youngster! Have you forgotten the plan? Gryphon, bounty, Dover - remember?”

“You nursemaid Mal.”

“Mal’s different. Mal’s one of us.”

“Cully –,” Wulf sat up. “That lad is one of _my_ ‘us.’ I do have a responsibility to the younger generation of my own kind, you know.” 

It was too late already. Cully recognised the signs of Wulf with an Idea stuck in his stubborn head – and once that happened there was no way for Cully to get it out again. He might as well factor it into his plans – because Wulf was going to do what he wanted to do anyway. 

“Oh, Gods.” Cully stared at his brother. “I’m going to have to put up with this, aren’t I?”

“Yup,” Wulf said. “We’ll have to have a few words with the lads. You see, his friends don’t any of them know he’s got magic. So we have to pretend we don’t know either. Anything you see him do, you pretend it was me. 

“How can they not know?” 

“I don’t know either, but they don’t. They’re _Camelotians_. They’re all completely dumb about magic. Actually, you can help me with that, if you’ve a mind to. The easiest way to show them there’s nothing to worry about is to show ‘em you’re not worried.”

“I’m not worried,” Cully said. 

“Good, then there’s nothing to worry about, is there? Then that’s our plan, ship-shape and Bristol fashion.” 

No, it wasn’t – not as far as Cully was concerned – but there was nothing he could do to change Wulf’s mind. He could chivvy his men into anything, coax soldiers into going anywhere, talk his way into anything, lie his way out of everything … but his words would have no effect on Wulf. Anything he could say would simply bounce off Wulf’s stubbornness like arrows off a castle wall. 

He sighed. “We’ll have to talk about it in the morning.” Cully pitched his voice to reach Sir Andrew across the camp. “Sir Andrew. Shall we arrange a guard rotation?” 

Sir Andrew was already lying in his blankets, examining his map again, and he looked up at Cully’s words. “We’ll do it. We have a set rotation.”

Oh, no, he was not letting the strangers stand watch while every one of his own men slept. “So do we,” Cully said – although _his_ sentry rotation was missing almost all of its names. Twenty good men who would never answer muster ever again. _Rot in hell, Helios._ “It’s no trouble.”

“Maybe we should set two men to watch at the same time? Two sets of eyes and ears are better than one.”

“Good idea. The gryphon hunts at night, I believe. One from yours, and one from mine?”

“Just what I was thinking, Sir Cullinan.”

“All right. Dinadan, you’re on first with Sir … who?”

“Sir Percival, and then Sir Ellyan,” Sir Andrew said. 

“And I’ll start the usual rotation from myself,” Din agreed.


	2. Alliance

Cully was woken up the next morning by a firm shaking on his shoulder. “Umph,” he said, without opening his eyes. 

“It’s morning, Cully – I mean Sir Cullinan.” It was Iorik’s voice. 

Cully opened his eyes. Iorik’s face above him was outlined by a panel of grey dawn sky. “Umph. God. It’s late!”

“Ap- _par_ -ently,” Iorik grinned, as if confiding a secret, “Sir Andrew doesn’t really - _like-_ being woken up before dawn, so to spare themselves a lot of bad temper they just leave him to sleep as long as they can. There’s a bit of breakfast. Bread and cheese.”

Cully sat up and looked over the edge of his blanket at the campsite around him. Sure enough, everyone else was up, except one person. That person still lay on the other side of the fire, swaddled in a thick grey blanket. Golden hair showed between blanket and saddle-bag, but nothing else. Everyone else was upright and moving around the camp, eating and packing. He could see his brother, by the horses, leading both of their mounts forward by the reins. 

Cully and Sir Andrew alone had been left to sleep. It seemed that his men had decided to copy the real knights, and leave their commander as well to sleep. 

Either that, or they decided _Leave the poor old bugger to sleep for a bit, at his age he needs it._ Hmph. 

The landscape around them was gloomy and shadowed, and not just with early dawn. The sky was grey. Inverted walls of charcoal were hanging threateningly above the treetops. The weather had turned. They were in for some rain, and soon. 

Cully threw his blanket off himself, and groaned his way to his feet. His knees had set overnight, and his ankles had been replaced by wooden hinges. It seemed to take longer every morning to work the blood back into his body and get his joints rolling as they should. The old wound in his left shoulder ached, and he massaged it with his right hand until the tingle in his left fingers went away. 

“I’m getting too old to sleep on the ground. I want a warm bed and a warm wife to share it, dammit.”

“Old age is not for sissies,” Mal said cheerfully. He was sitting on his haunches nearby, knees doubled effortlessly under him, and stuffing bread and cheese into his mouth with his fingers. 

“Shut up, you, and go saddle your horse.” 

Mal got up and walked away, stuffing the last of his bread in his mouth. Cully began rolling up his bedding, his eyes ranging around the camp as his hands tied the familiar knots on his bedroll. 

As he watched, he saw Merlin step over to Sir Andrew, shove him sharply with a foot, and sing, in a cheerful voice, “You _gotta_ get up, you _gotta_ get up, you _gotta_ get up, in the mo-o-or-ning.” 

Merlin stepped clear, a second before an elbow hooked over the edge of the blanket and lashed out at his ankles. 

Cully shook his head. Wulf was right, he told himself. No servant addressed a knight that way. And no man who really wanted to continue his employment kicked his employer awake. Merlin was something else; he had to be something else, to disrespect a knight and an aristocrat and get away with it. No other knight he had ever met would tolerate a peasant acting this way, and yet none of the Camelot knights even raised an eyebrow at it. Either that, or … perhaps Sir Andrew was not even a knight, himself?

The mystery deepened, every time he thought about it. The first mystery was why, exactly, he hadn’t had Wulf enchant them all to sleep last night, so that they could make their escape in the dark? They could have been eight hours’ ride away by now! 

The sung reveille had the desired effect, at least. Sir Andrew had hooked his arm over his blanket, and was now sitting up, blearily rubbing his eyes with his hand. “What time is it, Merlin?” 

“It’s breakfast time! Come on, up you get. Places to go, people to see, monsters to kill!” Merlin took the end of the blanket and whipped it bodily off his master as if he was unmaking a bed. 

Cully picked up the Sea Bitch from where she had slept alongside him all night and buckled her scabbard around himself, then collected both his boots and rammed his legs into them. “What’s this bread-and-cheese story?” he said to Dinadan, who was standing up stuffing something roll-like into his mouth. 

Din pointed to the fire, his mouth full. “We widing ouf in ha’ffa houwa,” he mumbled around his bread. 

Cully stepped over to the dead fire. Sure enough, there was bread by the fire: half-loaves in a sack-cloth bag, and some sliced cheese. He stooped and helped himself to a half-loaf, but ignored the cheese. He ate the bread standing up. Strangely enough, it seemed to be fresh bread, even if it did taste a little yeasty. Where had Merlin acquired fresh bread out here, miles away from any baker? 

Merlin was close by, next to the dead fire, rolling up Sir Andrew’s blanket. He half turned on his heels at the arrival of Cully’s cloak next to him, glanced up at Cully’s face, then glanced to where the edge of Cully’s cloak trailed on the ground. He picked up the trailing end of the cloak in one hand, turned the fabric over, looked closely at the seam for a moment as if wondering if it was edible, and then let out a pleased little laugh. 

“Heh-heh-heh.”

“What’s so funny?” Cully asked, staring down at the man at his feet. 

“Oh,” Merlin said. The mischievous smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “I know the tailor who made that. It came from Camelot, so that did.” He put down the hem of Cully’s cloak, and patted it against the ground as if it were a pet rabbit. 

“Well, of course it did. It’s a Camelot cloak.”

“Right you are,” Merlin said, with the same innocent expression. 

_A sorcerer,_ Cully reminded himself, _not a boy, and certainly not just any servant._ He bit down his irritation, and turned and walked away, slowly so that the sorcerer didn’t think he was worried. 

His water bottle was still attached to his saddle, and he untied it and stood eating the bread, tearing off mouthfuls with his teeth and washing it down with water. 

He looked up as Wulf walked up to him, leading both of their horses. 

“Are you enjoying your bread?” Wulf asked, a small smile on his face. “You don’t find it tastes a bit grassy?” 

“Yes … why? What’s wrong with it?” He looked at the last of the bread with suspicion. 

“Nothing. We’ve eaten worse. Just don’t eat any more of it.” 

“Why?” 

“Well…” Wulf looked up at the sky. “Let’s just say that when our boy Merlin says that the knights will eat whatever he throws in their direction, he’s not lying.” 

“We didn’t have any bread last night with our stew.” 

“There wasn’t any of the raw ingredient lying around last night.” Wulf glanced over his shoulder, to make sure all the others were out of earshot, and lowered his voice. “The bugger doesn’t just use magic when he’s making supper – he makes ‘em breakfast with it as well.” 

Cully gave his bread a suspicious stare, but it did seem to be just bread. _Grassy … not lying around last night … produced by Merlin with magic_ and at that point it dawned on him what they were probably eating. “Gaah!” He tossed the last crumbs toward the ashes of the fire. “This is the same trick you did with the seaweed in Sicily.” 

“Thought you’d like to know.” 

“But… _they_ don’t know?” 

“No.” 

“Isn’t that unethical?” 

“I’ve realized he doesn’t know any better. Part and parcel of there being no magic in Camelot - who’s around to tell the lad he’s doing something wrong? It’s _all_ wrong. Poor boy.” 

Merlin had just fed them all something that would have him in irons if he was caught at it in Cully’s command, but to Wulf, he was clearly still a ‘poor boy.’ 

“Have you spoken to the rest of the boys about him?” Cully asked. 

Wulf nodded. “They’re all in on it.” 

After they had finished saddling their horses, Sir Andrew walked up to him, chewing on his own piece of bread. 

“We didn’t get much time to talk tactics last night,” Sir Andrew said. 

Cully made an open-palm gesture to him and bowed his head, yielding to him. “You faced the first one. If there’s such a thing as a gryphon veteran, you’re it.” 

“I wish there was such a thing,” Sir Andrew admitted. 

Sir Andrew turned on his heel and looked around at everyone who could hear him. This would not be a private planning session, but an announcement. Somehow, he had the full attention of all the men – his own as well as Cully’s. Din and Iorik led their horses closer to listen to him, and even Mal stopped eating long enough to listen, open-mouthed. 

”There’s no such thing as a gryphon veteran.” Sir Andrew continued, pitching his voice to address them all. "Unfortunately our first attempts to kill the other one were not hugely effective. But we did learn a few things. It’s big, and it’s fast, but it’s not very bright. First of all, it does not seem to think about what it can’t see. In the fight in the Great Square, people were hiding right behind the statue, and it didn’t seem to realize that it could grab one of _them_ instead of one of us nasty spiky metal knights. If it can’t see you, it gives up and goes away.”

“Lancelot and I escaped from the first one in the forest by jumping behind a fallen tree,” Merlin said. 

“Right!” said Din. “That’s my plan. If you need me, I’ll be hiding under a bucket. Or… that cooking pot there is bigger. Yeah, I’ll hide under that.”

“You’ll have to fight Merlin for it, that’s his usual battle tactic too,” Andrew said with a brief smile, and then his face grew serious again. “Secondly, it doesn’t strike at random. It flies in a straight line. If we can work out where it’s going, we can get there first and wait for it to come to us.”

“Which you have been trying to do,” Cully said. 

“Which I think we _have_ now managed to do. If it struck in Greensward twice, then chances are it’s gone as far that way as it wants, and it’s coming back this way. We traced the first one’s route on a map. It went north all the way to Edinburgh, turned around there, and hit Camelot on its way back.”

“So it’s turned around in Greensward,” Cully finished for him.

“Yes. It might have just liked the climate in Greensward and decided to stay there a bit – but I’ve a hunch that it’s coming back in our direction.”

“Sir Andrew’s hunches are usually good – at least as far as hunting goes,” Merlin put in, as if said anyone had any doubt. 

“Why, thank you, Merlin, I didn’t think you noticed,” Sir Andrew said, with heavy sarcasm. “I’m so glad I have the appreciation of my servant.”

“Where do they come from?” Mal asked. 

“Scandinavia,” Merlin said. “There’s a breeding colony there. The Northmen have never managed to get rid of them. The fledgelings leave the nest and fly out and look for nesting sites of their own. Gaius has a book,” he said to Sir Andrew. 

“So … if we don’t kill it, it’ll build a nest?” Mal asked. 

“Charming thought,” Sir Gawain muttered. “Baby gryphons – how much d’ye think a nest of baby gryphons eats?”

“How do you think they reproduce?” Merlin wondered aloud, half to himself. “Do they lay eggs, or do they … but how would they suckle if they haven’t got any lips? I didn’t see any cloaca, it definitely had a full set of feline geni- … Wait, don’t say it, I don’t want to know.”

“Speaking of eating … this one hasn’t yet tasted human flesh, but once it has it won’t eat anything else. We have to stop it before it realizes that people taste nicer than cattle. And if we’re to use it to prove a point to Bayard, and to Lot and Odin and Alined … then we have to stop it before it goes back over the border into Mercia.” 

“So we have a deadline,” Cully said. “But we don’t know exactly when that deadline runs out.”

“Exactly.” Sir Andrew pursed his lips, which naturally drew his cheeks in, making him look as sombre as a carved effigy. “So, that is what we know.” 

“We knew all this already,” Sir Ellyan pointed out. 

“We did know all this,” Sir Andrew corrected him, “when there were just five of us. Now that we are ten, and now that we have someone with,” he nodded in Wulf’s direction, “ _extra skills,_ our plans must change.” 

Sir Ellyan looked grim, and the gaze he turned on Wulf was not friendly, but he nodded anyway. 

Sir Andrew continued. “Our first plan was to use bait to bring it down to ground. Specifically, ourselves. We were just going to do what we did the first time: ride out and wait for it to come and try to eat us, and then kill it with lances. But this one’s not eating people, only livestock, and it can get a cow or a sheep in any paddock.” 

“And there’s the rub,” Sir Gawain said. “We have lances, but obviously lances can’t fly.” 

“Not even Hengroen can jump that high,” Sir Percival said, and there was a grunt of laughter. 

Sir Andrew gave a slight bow. “So, Sir Cullinan – or Sir Cully, as I notice everyone calls you – what was your plan?” 

Cully straightened his spine. “Simple tactics – find it, shoot arrows and magic at it until it falls out of the sky, then more of the same. Simple plans are usually the best.”

“It’s a bit tougher to kill than that,” Sir Andrew warned him. 

“Now that we are ten, and not five, our plans must change,” Cully agreed, with a half-bow towards him. He was rewarded with a twinkle in Sir Andrew’s eyes, and a smile. “There’s no beast so big it can’t be killed. It’s magical, not immortal. We were going to shoot it down, but we’re leaving the hard part to Wulf.” He indicated his brother with a jerk of his thumb. 

“Archery and magic,” Wulf picked up the tale, from where he stood rubbing his horse’s nose. Every eye went to him. “A few bodkins to the wings would bring it to ground, and we would finish it with swords and fire. But now that we have lances … arrows may ground it, but a lance to the heart will kill it _much_ more quickly than chopping away at it with swords. Less risk for us, less chance that it can get away.” 

“And now that we have your arrows,” Sir Andrew said. “We needn’t wait for it to come down to us. We can reach up to it.” 

Wulf stroked his horse. “Anyway, as my brother said, it’s magical but it’s not immortal. It is not a Dorocha, it is flesh and blood. Pierce its heart, and it will die. The only difficulty will be in piercing its hide.”

“I remember that,” Sir Andrew said. “My spear shattered in my hand as if it were made of sugar.” He shook his head, as if at remembered shock. “The clearest thing I can remember is staring at the stump thinking That didn’t happen in training!” 

“But your weapons will not shatter if they are enchanted to pierce a magical creature,” Wulf said. “And this is where I come in. I am going to use a spell on all the arrows in flight, and all the lances as you reach full gallop. It won’t harm any of you – none of us here is secretly a magical creature, I take it?”

“Damn,” Din said. “I knew I should have mentioned it – I’m a mermaid. Sorry, chaps. I’ll just sit this one out, then, shall I? Don’t mind me, you all go on and have fun…” 

“ _Bregdan anweal gafeluc._ Those are the words,” Wulf said. “You’ll hear me say them. You might not _see_ me say them, but you will see the effects. Your weapons will go blue, and if it’s dark they’ll glow. They’re supposed to, so don’t drop them. Don’t miss your aim, hold steady and strike home, and the spell will do the rest.” 

Cully added, “There’s not much sense in worrying about shooting lines and battle order when we don’t know when we’ll find it. Those with lances know what to do, those with bows do too.”

Sir Andrew finished for them. “Arrows to bring it to ground. Lances to strike it once it’s on terra firma. And don’t run away when your weapons turn blue. We’ve all got that?”

There was general agreement: nodding heads and a rumbled chorus. 

“Good. I am glad to ride with you. All of you. Now let’s mount up and go find this beast.” 

………………………………………………

Arthur, because he was a dollop-head – and he was Sir Andrew of Dollop Head, and Merlin _still_ couldn’t believe he’d got away with that – and because he was Arthur, always rode at the head of any column he rode in. 

It was such an ingrained habit that his horse Hengroen was accustomed to being in the front, to the extent that he insisted on leading any column of horses he was in. Hengroen must carry his rider at the front, and that was the Law according to Hengroen. And of course Brownie insisted that he must travel neck-and-neck with his best friend Hengroen, which meant that Merlin must ride right next to Arthur, whether Merlin liked it or not. 

Thus it was today. Merlin found himself riding up at the front next to Arthur, as always, when what he _really_ wanted to do was drop back very subtly and have a quiet chat with Wulfric. 

Merlin could, obviously, rein back Brownie – but unlike Hengroen, Brownie was not a horse who was able to receive mental messages from humans. He would fuss, and complain, and yank at his reins, and generally make it obvious to everyone that today Merlin did not want to ride next to Arthur. Which would raise the question of _why._

The strange friendships of horses were sometimes not always convenient for their riders. 

“So, tell me, Sir Andrew of Dollop Head, what are we really off to do this morning?”

Arthur turned his head and gave him an unamused stare. “I already regret letting you do the introductions, Merlin.”

“I don’t know why you would. You are Sir Andrew of Dollop Head, aren’t you? It’s such a nice name. Now tell me again, Sire, why are we riding with these men, exactly?”

“Why would we not ride with them, Merlin? They wear the red cloaks of Camelot.” 

He knew the signs of Arthur being obtuse. “You know better than anyone they’re not really knights of Camelot. They’re lying about who they are. Why would they do that if they had innocent motives, let me ask you that? And why aren’t you challenging them on the lie?” He raised his eyebrows, and aimed a hard stare at Arthur. 

Arthur pursed his lips, and Merlin waited. 

“For all I know,” Arthur said, “they might be Mercians, and Bayard has made them red cloaks to let them ride in Camelot unchallenged.” 

Merlin shook his head. “They’re not Mercians. That cloak Cullinan’s wearing…”

“That false cloak of Camelot?”

“It’s not a false cloak of Camelot. It’s a real cloak of Camelot. No, no, let’s be precise about it. It’s your cloak of Camelot. He’s wearing _your_ cloak, Sire.” 

“My cloak? What on earth makes you think it’s my cloak?”

“Because I had a look this morning, and I recognise my own stitches. Double-stitched on the hem, see? Because you do so like to put your foot on it, don’t you? And pull the hem out and make extra work for your poor old servant? Meaning me? I know that cloak, Sire. It’s the one we left behind at John Miller’s farm when we went to Ealdor.”

Arthur looked astonished, as if he was about to challenge Merlin, and then he looked grim. “That answers the question of who they are. They are some of the men who followed Agravaine to Ealdor.” He heaved a sigh. “Honestly, Merlin, I don’t know whether to be pleased or upset.”

“Well, you’re going to have to make up your own mind, because I don’t know.”

Arthur let the conversation lapse, and Merlin rode quietly, leaving the King to his own thoughts. 

After a few minutes, Arthur reined Hengroen closer to Brownie, back into easy conversational range. “I will say one thing about these men,” Arthur said, as they rode alongside each other. “They are soldiers, not bandits. Sir Cullinan, or Cully, or whatever his name is, he _is_ their commanding officer. Have you noticed the way they defer to him? 

“Ask them a question, and they look to him to answer. He talks for all of them, and none of them argues.” 

“You’re catching on, Merlin, well done. I knew five years hanging around the barracks had to rub off on you sooner or later. Yes. They defer to him. Bandits don’t do that. Every bandit chief has to put up with constant testing of his authority, but not our Sir Cully. And have you seen how they take care of their weapons? I bet that if I did a surprise inspection right now, everyone’s weapons would pass. Not much spit-and-polish, but these men are a fighting unit, not a pack of bandits.” 

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“That’s a good thing. Soldiers are only my enemies when they’re my enemies. Otherwise they’re not.”

Merlin thought about that. Then he turned his head to one side and thought about that some more. “No, sorry. That doesn’t make any sense however I think about it. What does that have to do with trusting them?” 

That raised a smile, at least. “Don’t worry your little head about it, Merlin.”

“Worry? Me? Permanently.” 

“Consider this,” Arthur said, holding up one hand for emphasis, and staring at it as if his glove was part of what should be considered. “Eighty-seven mercenaries rode out after Lord Agravaine. Two companies. Our spies counted them all out.” 

“Right,” Merlin agreed. “And?”

“Five of them died in the tunnels with Agravain. Seventy-six were killed by the dragon. Exactly seventy-six, by the reckoning of the folk of Ealdor. That leaves six missing.”

“You think these are the six? But there’s only five of them. One’s missing. And it still doesn’t answer the question. Why are you trusting them?”

Arthur pursed his lips. “If they’re Southrons, Merlin, they’re defeated Southrons. These are all that are left of eighty-seven men. _Eighty-seven_ men, Merlin. They deserve pity, not vengeance.” 

Merlin sighed. 

“Don’t _sigh,_ Merlin. You’re not an actor in a tragic play.”

He wasn’t going to get an answer out of Arthur, he realized. Arthur was going to talk around the question _Why_ in endless circles until Merlin gave up. He was getting harder to read. The grumpy royal prat was bad enough, but at least when he was in that mood Merlin knew what to expect. This new, thoughtful, reserved Arthur was an unknown quantity. 

Merlin might as well ride alongside Arthur and think about his saddlesores in silence. Gryphons, wretched gryphons. And it looked as if it might rain today. He would have to start using magic soon to push the rain clouds out of their path, or face the task of protecting _nine_ sets of rusting chainmail, instead of four. 

And then Arthur spoke, and his voice was what Merlin thought of as his Just Before Bed Voice – the voice he used, late at night when they were alone, when the King finally opened his heart and admitted what was really troubling him. 

“They were my enemies, once,” he said, very softly. “They might be my enemies still, or they might not. But … my judgement isn’t very good, is it? Time and again I’ve been betrayed and lied to, by the people I care about the most. I am a King, not a mushroom, Merlin.”

A mushroom – kept in the dark and fed shit. Arthur was trying to keep his voice low, but he was not completely succeeding. There was suppressed emotion in his voice, a hint that he was trying to choose dispassionate words and not succeeding. 

“That’s not your fault, Arthur,” Merlin said. He had thought Arthur had got that thought out of his system weeks ago – hadn’t they already had this conversation? “Agravain made his own choices. He chose Morgana, and that’s his failing, not yours! You were deceived, it could have happened to anyone.”

“Yes, but it keeps happening to me. You want to know why I’m choosing to trust Cully? Very well. I can choose to trust no-one, and turn into my father. Or I can choose to trust anyone, and judge people by their own actions, not by who they are or who they were.”

“Arth-!”

“No, Merlin. I am turning over a new leaf, and I’m starting with Sir Cully. He has a chance to prove himself, and we’ll see if he’s to be trusted or not. Nothing I thought I knew is true anyway, so I’m starting over from scratch. And that’s all the _why_ you are going to get, so stop asking.”

……………………………………..

They stopped at mid-morning, under a gloomy sky, to feed their horses, check their legs, and to let them drink and graze with their girths loosened. 

Cully found himself grazing his horse on the end of its reins close to Sir Andrew, on the edge of their little company. His horse stepped closer to Sir Andrew’s, as if considering bullying the other beast off its present patch of grass, but Sir Andrew’s horse set its ears back and leered angrily at him. Cully’s horse thought better of the idea. Over _here_ was a much better place to graze.

“Fine horse,” Cully said to Sir Andrew, over the lowered neck of his horse.

“So is yours,” replied Sir Andrew, who was, like Cully, standing with his reins in his hands. “But I’m afraid I can’t say quite the same for your brother’s taste in horses.” 

Cully looked over to where Wulf was grazing his Danny-boy next to Sir Percival and Iorik. Against the deep grey-green of the grass and the heavy sky, their cloaks looked like impossibly bright battle standards. “No,” he said, “but sorcerers choose horses according to different conformation than the rest of us.”

Sir Andrew narrowed his eyes, as if surprised – or anxious. He looked over and examined Wulf’s horse again, but seemed to judge the gelding to be as ewe-necked, coffin-headed and slab-sided as before. 

“Wulf says that one has the strongest magic,” Cully explained. 

He saw the surprise on Sir Andrew’s face. “Horses have magic?”

“Some of them do.” He remembered Wulf’s words from last night. Wulf had an arrangement with Merlin to talk to this man about magic, and if that was the case then Cully might as well pitch in. “Not all, but some, same as humans.” 

“Why do they let us ride them, then?” Sir Andrew said. 

He didn’t think Sir Andrew really believed him. “He says they don’t think like we do. Equine magic is about feeling things, not about doing things, he says. Ask him, if you like.” 

“Er, no. No, I will take your word for it.”

They stood watching their horses for a while, and in that time Merlin reappeared with re-filled water bottles. Cully took his and tied it back onto the D-ring of his saddle. He watched Merlin hand Sir Andrew’s bottle to him, and then rub the knight’s charger affectionately on the nose as he walked away. 

Sir Andrew watched Merlin distributing the rest of the water bottles, and then retrieve his own horse’s reins from Sir Gawain. 

“What’s it like?” Sir Andrew said. He had his head down, and spoke so quietly that for a moment Cully thought he was talking to his horse.

“What’s what like?”

He gestured toward Wulf. “What’s it like, living with a sorcerer? Does it ever bother you?”

“Bother me? Why would it? He’s my brother. I’ve known about his magic as long as he has.” 

“You have?” Sir Andrew scrunched up his eyes in a doubtful frown, and Cully had to shake himself. He seemed so very young, suddenly. 

“His magic came out when we were both twenty-three.”

“Both?”

“I’m the elder by about twenty minutes.”

“How did you get used to it? How do you get used to something like that?”

He was surprised at the naivete of the question. It was true, then, what the whole of the South said – these Northerners were terrified of magic. “It doesn’t bother me in the least.” 

“Are you ever worried for him? He’s your brother, does it worry you that he’s messing with things that shouldn’t be messed with? Have you ever tried to get him to stop? Can he stop, if he wants to?”

“Hold on, there. I wouldn’t ask him to stop. Gods, what an idea! No!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s part of who is is, that’s why. You don’t say to someone you love, I don’t care for this, so you have to pretend it’s not who you are. Love doesn’t work that way.” 

Sir Andrew twitched, drawing his chin down to his chest. For a moment, he said nothing, as if Cully had presented him with a thought he would never have reached on his own. “How did you get used to it?” 

“Easy. I got used to it as he got used to it. He might be a sorcerer, but he’s always been my brother. That’s not changed. Magic doesn’t change who a person is inside, you see? It’s a talent like any other. Din can sing, Wulf can do magic. There you have it.” 

Sir Andrew examined his horse’s neck as if there was something interesting caught up in its mane. “I knew someone who developed magic, and … went sour. She changed, turned into a bitter enemy, and I didn’t even notice until it was too late. Magic warped her, twisted her into someone I don’t even know anymore.”

“Laddie, listen to me. The only people who turn sour with magic are the ones who are wrong in the spirit to start with. They’re the ones who would let things go to their heads even if all they had was Din’s voice.”

“Oh.” 

“Besides, without magic, you know where I would be now? I’d be a ships’ chandler in Dover, and Wulf would too. My father was a chandler, his father was a chandler, we’d have sons who were chandlers. But Wulf suddenly came out with magic, so our father put him on the first ship to France, and I went with him. Couldn’t let my little brother wander off into the world all by himself, could I? Not that there’s anything wrong with chandlers; ships will always need chandlers, and that’s a fact. But it’s not as interesting as soldiering. Magic made me just as much as it made Wulf.” 

“Does it ever worry you that he has a foot on both sides of the fence?”

“Both sides of what fence?”

“Well.” Sir Andrew examined the sky. “Magic. The occult. Dark powers and mysterious forces. The left-hand path.” 

“Wulf has nothing to do with the left-hand path!” he barked. 

“He has magic, doesn’t he?”

“Are you insulting my brother?” He hadn’t felt offended before at the probing questions, but a wave of indignation rose up in him, and then just as suddenly died again. _He really doesn’t know. Being un-educated is not a crime._

“I’m not insulting your brother.” Sir Andrew hesitated, pursed his lips, and then corrected himself. “I’m not _trying_ to insult your brother. I wanted to know how you deal with living with a sorcerer, that’s all. I have … there are reasons why I’m asking.”

Cully sighed. “If you want to know more about it, I’m not the person to ask. You should talk to Wulf, not me.”

“No,” Sir Andrew said. He shook his head. “Out of the question.”

“Too bad.” It was nearly time to mount again, and he moved around to his horse’s girth, and lifted the saddle flap to tighten it again. The horse bumped its nose into his back unhappily at the tightening girth. 

“You asked me what it’s like riding with a sorcerer, so I’ll tell you,” he said, over the saddle. “Wulf is very open about his magic. He tells me about it, he’s described it to me, but no matter how much he tells me about it, I can’t share it. I’ll never know what it _feels_ like to work a spell. It’s not something we can share, no matter how much he might like to.”

“Right,” Sir Andrew agreed, with his eyes narrowed. “There are always secrets.”

“Not secrets. Just things that I can’t share – but that doesn’t make him any less my brother, or my best friend. Do you understand? His benefit is not my loss. It takes nothing away from me, and it changes nothing of who he is, or we are. And that is the truth, and the whole truth. Does that answer your question?”

Sir Andrew drew in a deep breath, and straightened his back, and met Cully’s eyes. “Yes. Not all the way, but yes.” 

“Good lad.” 

Sir Andrew looked a bit non-plussed. “Lad?” he said.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Cully said. “Knight or not, you’re young enough to be my son, and don’t you forget it.”

Sir Andrew frowned and opened his mouth, as if he was trying and failing to think of something to say to rebut Cully’s opinion. He covered his lapse by turning on his heel and raising his voice. 

His command rang out across the group. “Right, girths up, stirrups down! Mount up and let’s go!” 

_Interesting,_ Cully thought, as he readied his horse. His men had known him for years, yet he saw his own men as well as Sir Andrew’s move to obey Sir Andrew’s order. He glanced at Sir Andrew, and found the other man looking at him enquiringly, as if waiting for a response. 

Sir Andrew flashed his eyebrows up and down, and Cully found himself grinning. 

“Are you poaching my men, Sir Andrew?” he said to Sir Andrew, in mock challenge. 

“Why, Sir Cullinan! How can you accuse me of such a thing? I never poach. I _commandeer.”_

“Aye Aye, Captain.” He gathered his reins at his horse’s withers, lifted his stiff leg to set his boot into the near-side stirrup, bounced on his knees and heaved himself up and over. 

“The older I get, the taller you horses get,” he grumbled to his mount, as he fished for the starboard stirrup with his toe. “I’m going to get myself a nice Highland pony one day, just see if I don’t.” 

Sir Andrew hauled himself up into his saddle. Then, with a quick flick of his hands behind his back, he flipped out the long trailing end of the red cloak, so that it fell neatly around his horse’s hindquarters like jousting trappings. 

_So that’s how they do it._ He copied Sir Andrew’s gesture with the end of his cloak. He turned in his saddle to make sure it had fallen neatly, and glanced around at the rest to make sure his men were sorting themselves out. 

Around him, they were all doing the same. Silver-clad men in bright red cloaks, all arriving in their saddles, and he looked around at them all with a sudden feeling of wonder. To his right, and to his left, they looked very impressive, even young Mal – they were competent, warlike and identical, a force to be reckoned with; and he in the middle was as impressive as his companions – he was one of these, now. 

_For now,_ he reminded himself, angrily, shaking his head. _You’re a mercenary captain! Do the job, get paid, get back on the road!_

It was too easy to forget that. They reminded him of Lance, who had sacrificed himself to rid the world of the Dorocha, or so the minstrels said. That sounded like something Lance would do. These were lads he’d be glad to fight alongside; but not, he told himself, _not_ while cocking a snook at King Arthur by pretending he was one of Arthur’s own knights! They’d kill him, if they for a moment suspected the truth. He was tempting fate too much already – he really should have told Wulf to spell them all to sleep last night, and escaped. 

Too late now, anyway; he was committed. 

Sir Andrew steered his horse out at a walk, and like a string of beads they all fell into line behind him. Merlin trotted up to his place at the head of the line, but Sir Andrew’s horse hooked a hind leg at Merlin’s, and gave the other horse an ugly threatening look. Merlin’s horse shied away, as if surprised. Merlin dropped back, and as they fell into position in a rough line, Cully found himself at the head of the column, riding alongside Sir Andrew. 

The sky was getting lower, hiding the upper half of the hills behind a thick curtain of white cloud. That curtain was being lowered slowly over the landscape. The air was cold, but for now it was clear along the floor of the valley. 

“Wulf,” Cully called, over his shoulder. 

Wulf was riding several horses behind them, behind Merlin, who was deep in conversation with Sir Gawain. He raised his head at Cully’s voice, heeled his horse into a trot to overtake the riders between them, and fell in alongside Cully, stirrup to stirrup. 

“It’s going to rain.”

“Thank you, Sir Obvious of the Siege Obvious,” Cully said, solemnly. 

Wulf grinned. He hadn’t shaved either, that morning, and his lips and chin were already dark with stubble. “I have to keep my commander apprised of the operational environment,” he said, lightly. “What’s up, brother?” 

“Sir Andrew has a few questions to ask you,” Cully said. 

“I certainly did not!” Sir Andrew protested from Cully’s other side. 

“Yes, you did. Go on. Ask,” Cully told him, and looked back at Wulf. “He has a few questions about your … ha, let’s call it your specialisation.” 

“Magic,” Wulf said. “Right-o.”

He looked back to Sir Andrew just in time to see the knight restrain a flinch. “Can you not try to be a little more subtle about it?” Sir Andrew protested. 

“I don’t care much for _subtle,”_ Wulf said, across Cully’s front. “Not where magic’s concerned. Magic’s not something to be bottled up in the dark. Fire away.” 

Cully jerked his thumb at his brother. “There you are, Sir Andrew. That’s direct from the horse’s mouth. You won’t meet very many sorcerers as happy to blabber on about it as Wulf is, so here’s your chance.”

“Think of it this way – if honest people refuse to talk about it, soon enough the whole conversation will be left to the dishonest people, and who wants that?” 

It was a familiar statement to Cully’s ears – he had heard Wulf make the same declaration in at least four different languages. 

Sir Andrew simply frowned at the back of his horse’s ears as the horse walked, and did not reply. 

Cully rode between them, waiting for the first question, but Sir Andrew said nothing, and Wulf seemed content to wait for Sir Andrew to open first.

After about two hundred yards, Sir Andrew turned around in his saddle to look at the riders behind them. 

Cully turned around to look, too. Mal rode closest to them. Beyond him were Sir Percival and Sir Ellyan, and beyond them, Merlin still rode in deep conversation with Sir Gawain. All of them were beyond easy earshot. 

“Sir Andrew,” Wulf said. “If you’re concerned about anyone else, you have nothing to worry about. No-one else needs to know. You’re not the first person to ask, and you won’t be the last.” 

Sir Andrew faced forward. “All right.” He ran his hand down his horse’s neck. “I will admit it. I do have a few questions.”

“Speak. Demand. I’ll answer.”

“First of all,” Sir Andrew said, “How do you find out if someone has magic?”

“You don’t. Unless you see them do it, or unless they tell you so, you can’t. You can’t tell just by looking at them.” 

Wulf could tell, Cully knew. Part of his talent was the ability to detect magic, to taste the working of another sorcerer close by. A vibration in the fabric of the world, he called it, and it was hugely useful, strategically. But if Wulf chose not to say so to Sir Andrew, Cully would not mention it either. 

Sir Andrew squinted his eyes at the horizon. Cully was starting to recognise the signs of An Approaching Thought. 

“What about spells?”

“Spells,” Wulf mused. “Spells are just the shapes for magic. Magic … you understand that magic is just the strength in a person? Magic by itself just sits inside you and does nothing. You need a shape to push that strength into if you want to do something with it. The words make the shape in your head, and you push your strength into that shape. Doesn’t have to have words, necessarily, but it does have to have a shape, and that shape we call a spell.”

“What if you think you heard someone say a spell? What if I think… think… that I heard a spell, but I don’t know, and I don’t know how to find out.” 

“Did you ask?”

“No! I can’t ask. To ask would be admitting that I suspect. I can’t even think of a way of mentioning it without giving away the fact that I suspect. And I can’t let on that I suspect without …” He shifted in the saddle, as if the thought itself made him physically uncomfortable. “No. I can’t.”

“Well, if you can tell me what it was, I can tell you if it’s a spell or not.” 

There was another long silence from Sir Andrew. 

“Well,” Wulf said, “It doesn’t matter if you can’t remember the words. Generally speaking, if it sounded like a spell, then it probably was a spell. 

“I remember the words,” Sir Andrew said. “It sounded like … West carafe-less.”

“Ah, right.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” 

“Well. Technically, that’s not a spell at all.”

“It isn’t?” Sir Andrew said. “Thank the Gods!” He turned in the saddle to look behind him at the other riders. He rocked his head back and laughed, a single loud openmouthed bark of delight. “Hah!” 

“It’s not a spell,” Wulf carried on, with steel in his voice, “because your pronunciation is terrible. I could shout that all day and nothing would happen. But the words you’re _trying_ to say are a spell.” 

The breath left Sir Andrew’s lungs as if he’d been kicked in the chest. “Oh,” he gasped.

“And a powerful spell, too. We’ve moved a long way away from good old _Feorbearne._ It’s a spell for … well. It’s a spell that turns a person into a simpleton.” 

“Oh.”

“Temporarily. It takes away a person’s will, turns them into a sweet-natured trusting little lambikin who will go along with whatever is suggested to them. The translation I was taught was, “The spirit was artless.” It can be used for evil. Obviously. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how.”

“Then it’s dark magic?” Sir Andrew frowned. 

“Not necessarily. It doesn’t just take away a person’s intelligence. It takes away … how do I put this? … the _need_ for intelligence. No fear, no pain, no secrets – all smoothed away, just like that. It’s useful when it comes to treating wounded soldiers. I’ve used it on Cully, once, when he took an arrow to the shoulder and refused to leave the field. Medicinal magic, you could say.”

Cully remembered that day. He opened his mouth to reply with a reminiscence of his own, but caught sight of the expression on Sir Andrew’s face, and closed his mouth again. 

“Oh,” Sir Andrew said. 

“But it is a hugely powerful spell. It must have been very impressive. When did you see it? Or … Wait a moment, did someone use it on you?”

“Er…”

“Did they hurt you?” 

“No.”

“Make you do things that you would never do otherwise? Touch you in ways that are … funny?”

“No! Certainly not!” Sir Andrew was getting over his shock, and his expression at the suggestion that he’d been touched in funny ways was outraged. 

“Have you been finding yourself with flashbacks? Bad dreams? Sudden urges to cry? Getting angry for no reason?”

“No!” Sir Andrew thought for a moment, and then corrected himself. “Well, except for the flashbacks. My memories have been coming back, bit by bit. But they’re not _bad_ memories. He looked after me as if I was a little lost duckling.” He dropped his chin for a moment, with a frown, and then added as an afterthought, “He bought me a blanket to sleep with, and tucked me in when I went to bed.” 

Cully bit down a laugh at the image. 

“How long did it last?” Wulf asked. 

“The whole day, until the next morning. I woke up with no memory of the day, and he said I’d been concussed.”

“The whole _day?”_

“Is that strange?”

“It’s a very long time for a spell like that! It’s a hideously heavy spell for a sorcerer to maintain. Who put it on you, Hecate herself?”

“Er…”

Far from Sir Andrew questioning Wulf, Cully realized, it seemed as if Wulf was questioning Sir Andrew. Sir Andrew didn’t look as if the conversation pleased him very much, but although he looked unhappy it was impossible to make out exactly what it was that was upsetting him. 

“You don’t remember?” Wulf asked. 

“Not very well. It was one of two people. I don’t know which one, not for certain. My memories are all fuzzy.”

“Two people you trust?”

“Two people whom I thought I could trust.”

“Two people you probably can still trust.”

“But if one of those people has magic, then …” 

“Nonsense. Listen to me, now. This spell would have put you completely into someone else’s power. You couldn’t have stopped them doing anything to you that they wanted. _Anything._ Believe me when I tell you that you will never depend more on another person’s goodwill than you did then. And if your trust was not abused then, then it never will be.” 

“Oh.” 

“Next question?”

There was a long silence. Cully looked at Sir Andrew, waiting for a reply, but he was frowning as if his mind was too full of new information. “I think I’m out of questions, for now,” Sir Andrew said. 

“Fine, then I’ll lecture, instead. Magic is all around, all the time. Magic is like history. You can’t separate magic from the world, any more than you can turn off history. It’s all around, in everything. It’s not _in_ the world, it’s part of the world itself.”

Sir Andrew nodded. “I’ve been told that before.”

“And there are different facets to everything. Every species and people in the world has its own magic. There’s human magic. But there’s also horse magic. Cat magic. Sidhe magic.”

“Oh.” 

“My magic’s sea magic. There’s selkie in our bloodline, somewhere, and it came out in me and Cully. My strength goes up and down with the tides, and so does his. We’re locked to the tide, both of us, and to each other.” 

“And it’s nearly spring tide,” Cully added. “New moon tonight.”

Wulf nodded. “And even in human magic,” he added, “there are different schools. I learned from the Catha. But there are the High Priestesses,” and as he usually did when he mentioned them, Wulf leaned sideways out of his saddle and spat alongside his horse, “and the Dragonlords, and the –.”

“Druids?” Sir Andrew asked. 

“Druids, and the Snakecharmers of Cairo, and the sea-mages of Finland. And if you’re desperate for answers you go to the Delphic oracles, who are all drugged to the eyeballs, but if you want an answer that actually makes sense you go to the oracles at Siwa. And if you’re clever, which I am, and you want to know what’s what and who’s who, which I do, you go and learn from the Catha, who know today what everyone else will want to know tomorrow about yesterday. Are you following me?”

“I think I’m getting confused,” Sir Andrew said.

“That’s all right. There’s no hurry. Magic’s not going anywhere.”

…………………………….

Merlin was never going to get away from Sir Gawain. Never. He was doomed to listen to Sir Gawain until they got this gryphon and went home, or until Gawain talked him to death. 

He had to find out from Wulfric what he was going to say to Arthur about magic. He had had some ideas overnight, and he needed to share them with Wulfric before the older man said something wrong to Arthur. He had asked Hengroen to order Brownie to keep his distance for a while, and Hengroen had agreed – but he hadn’t counted on Gawain. He didn’t want to listen to Gawain all day, he wanted to tell Wulfrick what to tell Arthur! 

He was not entirely sure that Wulf had quite grasped the delicacy of the situation. It wasn’t enough just to tell Arthur that magic was not bad. Arthur had to be coaxed into the idea like a skittish horse – nothing to worry him, nothing to arouse his suspicions, nothing that would make him baulk, panic, dig his heels in. Wulf couldn’t simply dump the idea into Arthur’s innocent blond head cold-turkey. 

Was ‘cold turkey’ even the right phrase to use, when discussing an education which the person being educated didn’t want, and didn’t know he needed? 

“You said your mother had magic,” Merlin said, when the long, long tale of the milkmaid and the missing geese and Gawain’s own part in solving the mystery had finally come to an end.

“My father was a knight, but my mum’s a witch,” Gawain said, cheerily. “She’s a bitch. Don’t be asking, Merlin.” 

“It’s none of my business.”

“I’m the eldest of four, and they all have magic save me. So I may’s well be a knight, eh? Beats being the one who gets sent out to find the black cats.” 

Black cats? What did they have to do with … _Oh._ Gawain’s family were some of _those?_ Oh, God. No wonder he didn’t talk much about hearth and home. 

“So, Merlin,” Gawain said, “when is Himself going to give Sir Cully the punchline?”

“Punchline?”

“Aye, when’s he going to do the other half of the joke? It’s a good prank, but it’s all very well tellin’ them he’s Sir Andrew of Dollop Head, but he’s got to tell ‘em who he is eventually, or the joke isn’t a joke. Ellyan and Percival have a wager going that Cully has a stroke when he finds out. Him, and his who ‘who the blithering hell are you’ bit. He’s going to have a fit. He’s going to have the shrieking hysterics, that’s what he’ll have. It’s going to be worth the wait, but how long’s Himself going to go on with it?” 

It took a moment for Merlin to figure that out. “Gawain, I don’t think this is a joke.”

“You mean he thinks he really is Sir Andrew?”

“No, I mean … he’s not doing it to be funny.”

Gawain flicked his long hair out of his eyes, and squinted at Arthur where he rode in front of them all. “But…”

“I don’t know either. But he’s not laughing. Don’t get me wrong, he might have started out thinking it was funny yesterday, but not now. I know Arthur’s pranks. He thinks a lot of things are funny,” _even though some of them aren’t funny unless you’re also a hulking big knight with a pea-sized brain,_ “but I don’t think this is one of them.”

“Magic,” Sir Gawain said. “Must be. It was funny right up until Wulfric came out with magic.” 

“Er,” Merlin said. 

“I don’t care. If it’s a joke, then I’m in. If it’s not a joke, then I’m still in. Arthur’s choice, aye? The other two agree with me. Joke, or not, we’re all behind him, and that’s the truth.” 

“Right,” Merlin said. “He knows that. And he’s Arthur. He always has a plan. Well, almost always. Usually, he has a plan.” 

“I’ve never seen him without a plan,” Gawain said. “But you tell him, when you get a moment?” 

“What’s that?” Merlin heard the shout from behind him. He turned in his saddle. Sir Percival was pointing at something in the distance, arm outstretched. 

“Am I the only one here who thinks they shouldn’t be there?” 

Merlin stopped his horse, and looked. Sir Gawain stopped his massive black horse, and had a look too. 

Ravens were circling above the long grass. Merlin couldn’t see what it was that lay there, what was attracting their attention, but he could see the leaping of the ravens and the flapping of black wings as the birds squabbled over their treasure. Whatever it was, it was larger than a fox’s kill. 

“He’s right,” Arthur said. “That does not look right.” He turned his horse in that direction, and they rode to investigate what Sir Percival had seen. 

Hengroen, ahead of him, began walking with a stiff-necked gait, his chin in the air, that signalled that he scented something he did not like. Hengroen, like Arthur and Merlin, had faced the gryphon before, and would recognise its scent. Merlin felt Hengroen broadcasting a warning to all the other horses. He felt a frisson of anxiety pass through Brownie, and knew it was bad news even before they came into view.

They drew rein on the rim of the little depression, and looked down on a scene of carrion and blood. 

He could feel the greed and grim pleasure of the ravens. Horrible things. He felt the senior of the ravens turn to look at him. _“Begone,”_ he said to it, and it cawed defiance at him. 

_“I said, Begone!”_ This time he pulled into his mind a little, just a little, of the dragon’s spirit, and he felt the ravens flinch away from it. 

The ravens took off, and beat for height, cawing their displeasure at being spoken to in that way. The grass they left behind was strewn with bones and unidenfiable scraps. 

Hengroen snorted his nervousness. Beneath Merlin, Brownie stamped his feet anxiously. All the horses were getting upset. 

“That’s not a fox’s kill,” Sir Percival said, under his breath. 

_Not only the horses,_ Merlin thought to himself. 

Arthur dismounted, and at that, so did the rest of them. “Gawain, Malcolm, hold the reins.” 

Merlin dismounted, and gave his reins to Gawain. He followed on Arthur’s heels. As he came closer, he picked up the bottom of his neckcloth and put it over his face. “Ugh,” he said, at the smell. 

“Horse,” Cully said, pointing ahead of them. 

The centre of the feeding frenzy was a ribcage and long spine, opened to the sky. The ravens had been feeding over it, but something else had killed it. Something far bigger than a raven had torn it to pieces, and scattered its bones in the tall grass. 

They fanned out to look the scene over. None of them seemed willing to look any closer at the wreckage of the horse’s carcass. 

“Fire place,” Sir Percival said, a few yards away. He pointed to something concealed in the grass at his feet. “This happened at night. Last night, or I’m no tracker. There’s a plate and water-bottle here.” 

“Horse… and its rider?” Arthur said, his brow wrinkling with concern. 

“God, let’s hope not,” Cullinan said. 

“Camelot’s couriers to Lot ride this way, if the weather is clear.” Arthur’s jaw was gritted like a block of stone. That nervous muscle jumped in his jaw. 

“I’ve found a saddle.” Ellyan called. “Girths unbuckled, stirrups run up. Nice saddle, too. Not a farmer.” 

There wasn’t sense in looking by the dead fire. No man would stick around after seeing his horse torn apart by a monster in the night. No, he would have fled into the night, away from the horror … and the monster, able to see in the dark better than any man, would have seen the quick movement of fleeing prey and pounced on him instinctively. There was nowhere to hide on this open heath. 

Merlin walked away from the others, and began tracing a circle, aware that Sir Percival, the master tracker, was doing the same on the far side. After no more than six paces, he saw what he did not want to see. 

“Pelvis,” he called back to the others. 

“Horse?” Arthur called. 

Merlin just looked at him, and shook his head. 

“I know that saddle,” Iorik shouted, with horror coming alive in his voice. “I recognise it. Cully, that’s George’s saddle. Remember, the steel chasings on the horn? That’s George’s saddle.” 

“Oh, God.” Sir Cullinan’s voice was that of an old, old man. 

……………………………….

Sir Cullinan claimed that George had preferred the flames to the grave, and so they made a pyre for George. His remains, what they could find, were wrapped in his blanket, and laid on top of the remains of his horse and his saddle. Then Wulfric, with a command of _Feorbearne_ that made Ellyan and Percival jump, set the whole lot to burn. The flames crackled with a sorcerous heat that required no fuel and defied the damp sky. The men, Arthur’s and Sir Cullinan’s together, stood in silence. 

Merlin found himself standing alongside Arthur as they watched the pyre burn. Arthur had his hands clasped behind his back and his spine straight. “Number six,” Merlin said, in an undertone only Arthur could hear. 

“And then there were five,” Arthur agreed, without a change of expression. 

“These are definitely the last of Helios’s mercenaries.”

“All that are left from eighty-seven men.” Arthur pursed his lips, and lowered his head. Merlin glanced at him, but Arthur’s face was unreadable. The gold of the flames glowed on his cheeks, and sparkled in his eyes, but he could not make out what Arthur was thinking. 

Sir Cullinan’s face, on the other hand, was as strained as if he was in combat. The deep lines of his face stood out as if engraved into his skin. Yet he held his spine straight as he watched the burial of his comrade-in-arms. 

“What was he doing here, I wonder?” Arthur said, in the same low tone of voice that was meant only for Merlin. “I’d swear it’s as much a surprise to them as it is to us.” 

Wulfric, on the other side of the fire, moved from Dinadan and Iorik to stand next to his brother, and spoke to him in an undertone. Sir Cullinan nodded, and then walked resolutely around the circle to stand next to Arthur. Arthur half-turned to receive him, his eyes on the fire. 

“The monster has tasted human flesh,” Sir Cullinan said. 

Arthur nodded, his eyes still on the fire. “And now there is no turning back for us. We must kill it, or see it wreak death and grief all over this land.” 

Merlin dropped back a step, so that the two of them could speak without talking across him. 

“There is no turning back for us either,” Cullinan said. “We’re going on until this beast is dead, come what may.” 

Arthur nodded. 

“I made a vow to myself that I would steer these lads out of the mess I led them into,” Cullinan said. “This is my fault. I can’t get back the ones I have lost, but … I promised I would save these ones, at least, whatever it took. I failed.”

“You can’t say who lives and who dies,” Arthur said. “In battle everything is up to chance. Fate decides.” 

“This was no battle. This was sheer, stupid, _stupid_ bad luck.” The bitterness in Cullinan’s voice was like poison. “I marched with him for twelve years – he wasn’t the steadiest, or the brightest, or the toughest, but he was _mine._ To end up like this… this isn’t the way a soldier should end, eaten like he was nothing more than a chicken. This isn’t the way anyone should end up. He deserved better.” 

Merlin, standing to one side, looked from one to the other and swallowed a lump in his throat. He himself had killed all the others who had gone to Ealdor with Cullinan. They had died a death even more useless and undignified than George, but Cullinan did not know that. He did not know that the killer of all the rest of his men stood quietly beside Arthur. Nor would anyone else, if Merlin could help it. He was a monster, and he knew it, but he would keep that knowledge to himself. He lowered his chin, and pretended to be invisible. 

The two commanders examined each other closely. 

“What was he doing here?” Arthur asked. “I take it you weren’t expecting to see him.” 

“No. We parted ways in Greensward. He wanted no part of the gryphon. He said he was riding north, directly across the border to Lot’s kingdom, and from there to France.” 

Arthur still had his hands clasped loosely in the small of his back, his shoulders squared and his back straight. “He’s too far south.” 

“He made a dry camp. Whereever he was going, he was going in too much of a hurry to plan his route. Something must have made him change his mind and come back again.”

“Something he saw across the border,” Arthur guessed. “Or something he saw on the border.” 

“We may never know. But my lads are all of one mind, Sir Andrew. We won’t rest until this monster is dead.” 

“Nor will I,” Arthur agreed. He extended a hand, and Cullinan took it, and they shook hands with matching sombre expressions. 

The pyre crackled and snapped in the background. The flames were beginning to fade, Merlin noticed. It wasn’t getting enough fuel, he realized, which meant that Wulfric was nearing the end of his strength. Strange, he’d thought that Wulfric was stronger than that. 

Well, no matter. Merlin stood behind Arthur and Cullinan, which meant that they blocked him from the sight of the others around the fire. He focused his mind on the fire, and pressed his own power into the word _Bearnende_ to keep it burning, so that it surged again, hotter than before. 

For a moment, he felt the touch of Wulfric’s mind, feeding the same sorcerous fire. To his surprise, Wulfric’s magic was cold, and tinged grey-green in his mind. It stung slightly, like the touch of seawater on bare skin. Sea magic, Merlin realized. And then, gently, the touch of Wulfric’s magic ebbed, so that he could rest his nearly-exhausted strength. Merlin was able to maintain the magic on his own, effortlessly. 

Cullinan snorted, and dashed the back of his hand across his nose as if irritated by something. Then he turned to face Arthur, turning away from the fire, as if he had said farewell to his lost man for long enough, and could handle no more mourning. His voice was firm again. 

“We have but one advantage,” he said to Arthur. “The monster has tasted human flesh, and it will want more. There are no villages here, am I right?”

“None inhabited,” Arthur assured him. 

“Then if it wants more, it will come to us. And unlike poor George, we’ll be ready. And we’ll serve it up a course that will give it a very nasty belly-ache.” 

“We think alike, Sir Cullinan,” Arthur said, with satisfaction. 

Merlin stared at Arthur. “That’s your plan, is it?” he cried, appalled. “We’re just going to ride around in circles until it tries to eat us?”

Arthur glanced over his shoulder at him. “Give me credit for a little intelligence, Merlin.” He stepped forward, and addressed the whole circle of men. 

“We know know that the monster is here,” he said, his voice ringing out. “Here, above that,” he gestured with his index finger at the cloudy sky, where anything might be hiding. “And we’re here, and it wants us. All we have to do is hang around until it spots us. We won’t get a better chance than this.” He extended his arm, his index finger pointing across the heath toward a low rise in the distance. “We will ride to Hammer Tor, and we will wait for it to come to us.”

“Hammer Tor?” Merlin blurted, unhappily. Sir Gawain grunted in displeasure. The Knights looked grimly at each other. Cullinan’s men looked at each other in confusion, and exchanged shrugs of ignorance. 

“Why Hammer Tor?” Percival asked. 

Arthur looked around at them all, and let his hand fall. “Hammer Tor stands upon a height. The ground is smooth, suitable for a mounted charge. It has water, and shelter, and firewood, and we can fall back on the buildings for cover. We will ride to Hammer Tor and we’ll light a fire as bait. We don’t hunt by chasing any more, gentlemen. We hunt by waiting for our quarry to come to us! Mount up!” 

Like hell, Merlin thought to himself, as the knights moved to return to their horses, ready to ride. If they were going to fight the gryphon, they needed darkness to do it in, so that he could cast his enchantment without being seen. Darkness, or… 

The monster hunted by day or by night, but it didn’t think to chase prey it couldn’t see. It hunted by sight only. As long as he could keep it from seeing them, they would be safe. 

A plan occurred to him.

…………………………………………..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author feeds on comments.
> 
> I used the number seventy-six, the total number of KIA mentioned by Arthur in The Last Dragonlord, because the number of MIA is much too high compared with the numbers of mercenaries who are seen marching out behind Lord Agravain – not to mention the numbers probably lost in the following days.


	3. Hammer Tor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a bit of gryphon-chopping.

The fog rolled down from the sky in the later half of the afternoon. It blanketed the uplands, slowly, subtly, so that at first Cully didn’t notice it at all, until suddenly it seemed to have been there all along. It obscured the horizon, and then the next ridge, and then as they rode a waft of it rolled forward to meet them. 

They rode into it, without slowing, and it receded around them as if they rode in a bubble of fog. The horses plodded on, patiently carrying their riders in the strange weather as if accepting of all the odd occurances their humans asked them to bear. Cully could see no further than a few yards of heath beyond his mount’s ears.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Cully grumbled. “This will put rust on the armour.”

“Not a problem for me. I have Merlin to deal with it.” Sir Andrew grinned, and turned in his saddle. 

Cully turned to look as well. Behind him, Sir Percival and Iorik rode alongside each other, with Sir Gawain and Dinadan riding behind them, behind a thin veil of fog. The riders strung out behind them each disappeared behind a thicker screen of creeping damp air, until Merlin, right at the back of the column, seemed as insubstantial as a ghost. The mist had closed in around them. 

He heard no voices behind him now. The pointless babble and ragging of soldiers on the march had died away. George’s death seemed to have shut every man’s mouth. They rode in silence, now; ten men riding on a single shared mission at last. 

“I know who you are, by the way,” Sir Andrew said, without raising his voice, or looking away from the walls of fog around him. 

Cullinan started slightly. “I’m…” 

“You’re Captain Cully of Dover, who commanded the defence of the Lady of Benoic. I didn’t recognise your name until you mentioned your birthplace, but then it came back to me.” Sir Andrew straightened in his saddle, glanced at Cullinan’s face, and smiled briefly at him. “Lancelot told me about you.”

“Mermaids,” Cullinan agreed, relaxing again in his saddle. “Vicious things, mermaids. Not something you want to find in the bathtub, let alone climbing over the gunwales.” Lance had been shocked to find that the landlubber’s fantasy of mermaids bore no resemblance to the real thing. 

“He spoke very highly of you, Sir Cullinan. He didn’t mention your brother; but then again, I suppose that’s to be expected. All things considered.” 

“It’s true. I fought with him at Benioc. He wasn’t a knight, then, though.”

“Did you ever fight with a man named Hengist?”

“Heard of him. Never fought with him. He wasn’t a professional.”

“Ah, and you’re a professional?”

“I am a professional.”

“Even though you weren’t nobly born?”

“I’m not nobly-born,” Cullinan said. “But neither are you, Sir Andrew.”

That caused Sir Andrew’s eyebrows to quirk upwards in disbelief. “I’m not?” he asked. 

“No. Merlin told Wulf. You weren’t born to be a knight, he said; any more than I was. You’re a knight at Arthur Pendragon’s whim, just like me.” 

Sir Andrew let out a bark that he tried to turn into a cough. “There’s one thing you should know about Merlin. He always tells the truth, but he likes to cherry-pick _which_ truth.” His teeth flashed in a grin. “He’s either the best liar or the worst liar I’ve ever met. I’m not entirely sure which.”

Cully let his tension relax. He had managed to turn that question aside. Sir Andrew seemed to accept him as a newly-dubbed knight. Now to change the subject … 

Wulf was going to indulge his paternal instincts for the foreseeable future, whether Cully liked it or not, so Cully might as well find out a bit more about the ‘poor boy’ back there. He liked and trusted Sir Andrew already, but he was far less trusting of Merlin.

He turned in the saddle, to look back along their column. “So, is he your squire, or your servant, or your healer, or your cook?” Cully asked. 

“Merlin? He is all of the above, and master of none.” 

“I notice no-one else has a servant along?” he hinted. 

“No. Merlin likes to invite himself into things that are none of his business. Gryphons, dragons, trolls, Dorocha…” Sir Andrew harrumphed to himself in amusement at some private joke of his own. “One reaches a point at which one stops bothering to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. I passed _that_ point a long time ago.” 

“Have you known him long?” 

“A fair number of years. Long enough that I’m used to his peculiarities.” 

“He’s an excellent cook, at least.”

“He’s an excellent servant, in his own way. Mind you, I _have_ had to get used to a servant who refers to my shoulder armour as my ‘chicken-wings,’ and calls my sabatons ‘bootees,’ but you would be amazed at what I can put up with, in exchange for a good heart and a willing spirit.”

“I see,” Cully said. 

Sir Andrew was looking at him with a rather odd, inward-looking smile, as if amused by something Cully was not aware that he was doing. “I mean that, Sir Cullinan. You’d be amazed at what I can put up with.”

He had a feeling that Sir Andrew was making some obscure joke at his expense – but since he was already aware that Cully wasn’t nobly born, it probably did not matter. 

Still, he was looking at Cully closely, as if expecting a response. “I’ll bear that in mind if ever I do something you’ll have to put up with,” Cully said. 

“Excellent.”

They rode in quiet silence for a while. 

It was not cold, but Cully was absorbed in the sight of the mist receding before him, as if it was retreating. 

Mist on land was always different in character, somehow, to fog at sea. At sea, the mist did not so much obscure the view, as it did entirely blur all the divisions between up and down, here and there, near and far. On land, at least there was already another bush, another ridge of heather, by which to measure one’s progress and to gauge distance. 

“Can you find your way to Hammer Tor in this lot?” he asked Sir Andrew. 

“I can find my way anywhere in Camelot,” Sir Andrew said. “But I know Hammer Tor well.” 

“It’s not familiar to me.”

“Ah, well. You’re new to Camelot. It’s not much of a tor, as tors go. The legend is that one of the gods of the Old Religion stubbed his foot on it, and in a fit of rage flattened it like a flapjack with his hammer. There was a fort on it, in my grandfather’s day. When the border moved north, the villagers took the stones of the tower for themselves to build their homes. There were fifty-two people living there, when last I saw it. Good people. Not rich, not very fertile land, but lots of sheep. Nice, fat, healthy sheep.”

Cully hadn’t seen a sheep all day. He wondered why Sir Andrew was telling him all this. He hadn’t the slightest interest in some remote upland village, whether they had good sheep or not. 

A noise cut through the air. 

It was a metallic scream. It cut straight to Cully’s ears as if it was being shrieked directly at him. His mind went white-hot with the thought _DOROCHA …_

…before reality snapped back around him. Sir Andrew’s horse leaped off the ground in a shocked rear. Cully clamped on the reins and fought to restrain his own horse. He wheeled it between weight, bit and spurs, and roared at the top of his voice. “Form up! Defensive square!” He drew the Sea Bitch and held her aloft, and spurred back along the column. 

He heard one of the horses scream in fright. “Lances couched!” Sir Andrew shouted. Cully was aware of him galloping, wheeling, his horse whirling. “Prepare to charge! Form up, form up! MOVE!” 

He caught a flash of steel as Wulf drew his sword, his teeth bared and the gold already burning in his eyes. Cully’s horse pirouetted, still obeying the training of its dead owner. Its haunch collided with Sir Percival’s mount, jarring the beast under him, and then they were all ready. His own men had drawn their arrows back on their bowstrings, aimed at the sky. Sir Andrew’s men had couched their spears. They faced outward in a circle, hooves stamping, equine heads tossing with agitation. He was aware of Wulf muttering, winding up and focusing his magic inside himself.

“Hold steady,” Sir Andrew said, somewhere behind Cully, his voice suddenly calm and surprisingly confiding. “Wait for it.” 

Sir Percival’s lance, steel-tipped, reached out fourteen feet before him into the mist. Cully focused his eyes on the tip. It did not waver. 

“Steady, boys. Wait for it. If it wants us, it will come down,” he said, to his men. 

They waited. He could feel his horse shaking under him, terrified. He could see the animal’s eye, rolled white in its head; but pressed close to its fellows it did not bolt. It knew what was up there. 

His stomach was clenched tight. He fought to breathe through a chest suddenly too tight. 

The minutes passed. 

“It’s gone,” Wulf said, eventually. 

“Well, of course it’s _gone,”_ Merlin snapped waspishly. “You think it knows we’re here?” 

“Hold fast,” Sir Gawain said. 

“No,” Sir Andrew said, in a normal tone of voice. “He’s right. It’s gone.” 

Cully turned his saddle. “It could still be up there.”

“Listen.” Sir Andrew left the formation, rode forward a few paces, and then turned his horse. “Listen to that? Nothing.” 

“It’s a sight hunter, like an eagle,” Sir Percival said. He righted his lance again. “That scream – that’s its way of flushing out its prey. It’s not a stalker – it’s too big. If it saw us, it would have been right on us like a fox in a henhouse.” 

“It flew right fucking past us in this fucking fog!” Iorik swore. “A hundred gold coins, and it flew right fucking past!” 

“Hammer Tor.” Sir Andrew said. “We wait at Hammer Tor.” 

They rode out again. 

The mist, if anything grew thicker. Nothing could find them in this. 

An hour later the unearthly scream cut through the air again. But it came from further away, sounding less like a Dorocha and more like just a really big hawk. It came no closer, and although the horses jumped, the riders did not form up. They rode on. 

Then the ground began to firm up into a road, and a hedge appeared out of the mist to his left. Behind the hedge, Cully could see receding ranks of neglected furrows. The land began to slope up under them, and his horse had to dig slightly with its hocks to climb. The hoofbeats behind them began to harden into a crisp clop, clop, and not a dull clomp, clomp. They were riding on rocky soil. 

“Hammer Tor.” Sir Andrew’s voice was grim. 

A grey block loomed up ahead of them, and they rode toward it. Another grey block, beyond that, and another on the other side of the road, and another, and another … small houses, with the usual steep-sloped thatch roofs of Camelot. A tree here, a ramshackle outhouse leaning there. An empty pigsty, a silent dovecote. Black windows and closed doors; kitchen gardens without gardeners, alleys without passersby. No voices; no smells of smoke or cooking; no livestock.

It had been a village once, but not any more. Sir Andrew drew his horse to a stop, and the rest of them filed in and stood around him. 

“What the _fuck_ happened here?” Cully asked, looking around at the mist-shrouded walls. “Where are they?” 

“The Dorocha,” Sir Ellyan’s voice said, behind him. 

_The Dorocha…_ Oh, God. No wonder Sir Andrew had so much to say about this place. “Did anyone get out?” Cully asked. 

Merlin shook his head. 

“The Dorocha arrived in the small hours of the morning, when everyone was in bed and sleeping off their Samhain party,” Sir Ellyan said. “It took them all by surprise. The searchers found them all in their beds.” 

“The whole village lies in a grave to the west,” Sir Percival said, with his jaw clenched. 

“There’s plenty of wood to build a fire,” Sir Andrew said. His jaw was set solid, a lump of muscle, and his hair was slicked darkly in the damp air. His blue eyes looked like ice as they scanned the village. “That will attract the monster’s attention.” 

“We can spend the night in one of the houses,” Sir Percival said, although he didn’t sound as if he wanted to volunteer. 

“It’ll be all right. Five will get you ten that this mist clears up by nightfall,” Merlin said, but the damp silence in the air shut down any cheer he might have been trying to raise, and no-one replied. 

“To the top it is, then,” Sir Andrew answered the silence around them. He kneed his horse around, and the horse walked on, head held low as if it, too, knew that something dreadful had happened here. 

‘The top,’ Sir Andrew called it. It wasn’t very high. It was merely a bald crest, not even higher than the rooftops around it, ribbed with bare flagstones and foundations where a fort had once stood. A watch-tower might have stood here, once, but now it was clearly just a common. Or it _had_ been a common, once, but nothing had grazed here in months. 

Sir Andrew dismounted first, and stood looking around, but for a moment no-one joined him on the ground. 

“Will anyone ever live here again?” Mal asked. 

“We might garrison it again, one day,” Sir Andrew said. “When a garrison moves in, people follow to serve it. Families, tradesmen, servants, and they’ll move into the houses and bring the place back to life.” 

“If not…” Wulf said, “if there’s no-one willing to build a new story of their own on top of the old story, it will always be Dead Hammer Tor, where everyone died on Samhain’s Eve.” 

………………………………………..

The heavy mist did lift at nightfall, because Merlin made it so. 

The mechanics of it were easy enough. He’d raised mist before, but only enough to fill a small space. Raising enough mist to cover ten riders and their horses, not only in all directions that they _looked_ but in all directions that they might choose to _gallop,_ was more of a strain. It must have looked a little odd from the outside, a bank of mist moving purposefully at the speed of a trotting horse across the valley, but the only living creature around to see it was the gryphon, and it did, after all, have the brain of a bird. 

It was a relief, to allow the cold damp air to lift back into the clouds again. He had a suspicion that he had disrupted the weather pattern of the upland, so that the promised rain would not come until tomorrow. There was a chill in the air tonight.

It was a very simple plan. The gryphon was here. It must have flown by them no more than a hundred yards above their heads. If it saw the fire burning on top of Hammer Tor, it would come and have a closer look. And it would see them, and it would attack, and then either his own friends would attack it with lances, or Wulfric’s friends would attack it with arrows. The knights’ horses had had their nose-bags, but they were still saddled and ready, and Cully’s men had their bows. All Merlin had to do was bolt away into the houses, as soon as the gryphon arrived, and cast his spell from a hidden place. 

It was going to be easy enough. He had done exactly the same thing so many times before. This time, he even had the comfort of knowing that they were all primed to see magic performed, and he need not hide it as carefully as before. Whatever they saw, they would blame on Wulfric. Even if Wulfric did not have the strength to help him with the spell itself, that was a huge burden taken off his shoulders. 

The knights - all of them - had spent some time fetching wood for the fire. Merlin set up a spit, and put the remains of Dinadan and Mal’s archery practice over the fire to roast for supper. Then Arthur, for reasons known only to himself, decided to spar with all five of the strangers, one by one. 

Merlin sat next to the fire and watched, turning the spit. They managed to pass Arthur’s ‘basic training’ test, all five of them. Even Malcolm knew how to hold a sword, as if he’d done it since toddlerhood. Merlin had seen Arthur test enough new recruits to know what he was seeing. Arthur was right, in the sense that they were all trained soldiers and not mere bandits. Wulfric didn’t even attempt to use his magic, although Merlin was waiting to step in and give him a nasty surprise if he did. 

After the sparring, Arthur came and sat on a bench he and Percival had dragged out from the front garden of one of the houses. 

“They’re good,” Arthur said. “Cully’s a bit slow, but at his age, that’s to be expected. They’ll do.” 

“If they’re Helios’s survivors, they would have to be good,” Merlin said. 

“Maybe, maybe not.” Arthur tugged his gloves off, and ruffled his fingers through his hair to let his sweat dry. “Have you noticed the significance of the numbers, Merlin?”

“The numbers?”

“Eighty-seven mercenaries. Five killed in the tunnels. One killed by the gryphon. Seventy-six killed by the dragon.”

“Yes?”

“Seventy-six, Merlin? Don’t you remember? The dragon killed seventy six of my subjects when it attacked Camelot.”

Merlin rocked back on his heels, letting go of the spit. “I’d forgotten that.” 

It was really true then, that Arthur never forgot a single loss among his people. He had thought that Gwen was exaggerating. Merlin had been equally as responsible for those seventy-six as for these, but even _he_ had forgotten the significance of seventy-six.

“The dragon didn’t kill at random,” Arthur said. “It was balancing its blood-debt. Seventy-six of my enemies, for seventy six of my subjects. Cully isn’t alive because he’s good. He’s alive because he’s lucky.”

He was going to have a chat with the dragon again, soon, and the number seventy-six was going to feature prominently in it. “But … why?”

Arthur tipped up one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I think it’s not within any mortal’s grasp to understand how a dragon thinks.” 

“Does that mean the dragon is an ally?”

“I don’t know. All I know for certain is that Cully does not need to know. It would break his heart to know his men are only alive because the dragon can count.” He brought his hands together in front of his face and leaned his fist on his chin, gazing into the fire. 

Merlin recognised the signs of Arthur deep in thought, and kept quiet. He reached out and began turning the spit again. He waited for Arthur to say something else, but he did not; merely sat watching Merlin turn the spit as if he’d never seen one before. 

Sir Cullinan walked up, with Sir Wulfric close behind him. He warmed his hands over Merlin’s fire for a minute, and then sat down on the other end of Arthur’s bench. 

“Your fellow Gawain keeps taking a sip out of a little flask he thinks I haven’t seen,” Cullinan said, in a low tone so that the rest of the men didn’t hear him. “You may have a bit of a problem with that one.”

“I know,” Arthur admitted, lowering his hands. “I’m going to have to do something about it, sooner or later.”

“And I just stopped Mal chopping up wood with his sword.” Wulfric lowered himself stiffly to kneel down on the ground, and warmed his hands in front of Merlin’s fire. 

“Did you tell him there are perfectly good axes in the houses?” Arthur asked. 

“He says he _knows,_ but there might be _dead people_ in there!” Wulfric said, giving his tone a sharp teenaged lilt. “They’ve all got superstitious, suddenly. It’s this place. It _feels_ dead.”

 _The Dorocha…_ Merlin turned his spit. They were on everyone’s minds, even now. So many deaths, so suddenly – and not even in battle, not even killed by a human agent who could be blamed and cursed, but by nothing more substantial than a scream in the darkness. 

“I’m not jumping for joy about sleeping in there, myself,” Arthur agreed, and sighed. “But I can’t say I want a gryphon for a bedmate either.”

Merlin turned his spit, and pretended he could not hear, just as he did when he listened to Arthur confer with Sir Leon. 

“Where were _you_ when they came?” Wulfric asked. There was no need to specify what ‘they’ were. 

Arthur held his hands out to the fire. “In Camelot. They reached us on the second night. The castle went through its whole siege-stock of firewood in a matter of days. You?”

“At a castle in Devon, the third night,” Wulf said. “At least we were wide awake when they arrived. It took us a while to work out what was going on, and then suddenly we had nearly three hundred terrified refugees on our hands.” 

“The castle’s guard?” Arthur asked.

“Useless,” Cullinan grunted. “It was a little worse for Wulf, though.” 

“How so?” Arthur asked. 

Cully grunted irritably. “Everyone was looking at him, saying Why aren’t you doing anything? They actually got angry with him! They said, _They’re_ magic, _you’re_ magic, why don’t you get out there and _do_ something?” He shook his head. “People! Magic’s evil, _e-e-evil_ – right up until they actually need it, and then all of a sudden it’s _Do something!”_

“I’ve never felt so helpless in my whole life,” Wulf said. He held out his hands, and stared into his palms. “I’ve had magic since I was twenty-three, and suddenly I didn’t have it any more. I felt … naked. Is that how everyone else feels, all the time?” 

It had not felt like _nakedness,_ by Merlin’s judgement. It had felt like emptiness. 

“Don’t start that again!” Cully told him. “You sound smug.” 

Arthur pursed his lips. “When you say you didn’t have it…” 

“Don’t you know?” Cully asked. He narrowed his eyes, as if surprised by Arthur’s ignorance and wondering if Arthur was being obtuse. 

Merlin could have answered the question for him, but instead he squirmed silently with dread. He bit down on the corner of his lip and tried to keep his dread out of his face. He’d wanted Wulfric to talk to Arthur about magic, but not now! Not while Merlin was sitting right here! He avoided looking at Arthur’s face, but turned the spit at an even speed. _Don’t look in my direction, Arthur…_

“Enlighten me?” Arthur insisted.

“You know that the Dorocha sucked away energy,” Wulfric said.

“I know. Their touch froze people. Stopped them cold. No mortal has ever survived their touch. Or so I’m told.” 

“Right. Their touch froze life itself.” Wulfric agreed, and held up one finger as if to make a point. “But their _presence_ froze _magic._ Every human sorcerer in Albion lost all his strength when the Dorocha were nearby. Weak or strong, right-hand or left, male or female … it made no difference. Magic – _poof!”_

“Did you know that?” Arthur said, suddenly, to Merlin. 

His sudden inclusion in the conversation caught him by surprise. “Er-umm. Gaius did mention … something … about the Dorocha being the antithesis of life.” 

“That sounds like Gaius,” Arthur said. His eyes were thoughtful. “But on a more personal level?” 

Merlin bent to the fire, busying himself with rearranging the stack of firewood, thus having an excuse to avoid Arthur’s gaze. He picked up another log and shoved it under the fire. “Well, you know Gaius. He doesn’t practice it any more. Maybe he didn’t even notice it was gone?” He was aware of Arthur’s eyes still watching him. 

“The only benefit to Wulf’s magic when the Dorocha came,” Cullinan said, “was that he kept a green light burning, and if it went out… _guess who’s back?”_

“Worst Samhain of my entire life,” Wulfric grumbled. “All my strength, all my training, and all I could do was be a canary in a coal-mine! Hah. I couldn’t do a damn thing. Not a damn thing, except light a torch and wait for the sun to come up, just like everyone else.” 

“That, I did not know,” Arthur said. 

“You’re not the only one,” Cullinan said. “How many sorcerers do you know, who would ever admit, _ever,_ under pain of death, that all their strength had gone _toodle-doo?”_

“Er, none that I can think of off hand,” Arthur admitted. 

_“Smug_ bastards, sorcerers,” Cullinan said, eyeing his brother with an affectionate frown. 

“I’ve made no secret about my magic. I’ve made my _living_ from my magic, so when suddenly I didn’t have it any more…” Wulfric shook his head. “You get to depend on it always being right there, fired up, ready to use. When suddenly it’s gone – hell, I don’t even carry a tinder-box! I haven’t _needed_ a tinder-box in thirty years! I haven’t had to sharpen my sword, or heat water, or clean a damn thing by hand in thirty years, and then suddenly it was gone. It was like losing my sight, or my hands, or the use of my legs!” 

Merlin kept his head down. He remembered that time all too well. Emptiness. And gut-watering fear … the Dorocha had looked deep into him and pulled out all of his strength, and every drop of his courage. 

“What was that?” cried a voice from the other side of the Top. They all jerked. 

Arthur leaped up off the bench, his head turning. 

Mal was braced on the other side of the Top, with one hand pointed like a spear to the sky. “I heard it! I heard it!” he screamed. “It’s coming!”

Arthur launched himself into movement. “Move! Get into positions! Percival, my horse!” He rocketed away from the fire. 

_“Shitfuckshitfuckshit_ \- Archers on me!” It took a moment longer for Cully to heave himself up off the bench, but his voice was as loud as Arthur’s. “Archers on me! Form up!” 

Merlin flung down the spit, scrambled with his arms and legs, almost tumbled into the fire, half ran, half-knucklewalked away until he tripped over the stack of firewood, and then crashed down onto his face. He was about to scramble up again, when iron fingers grasped his arm and hauled him bodily up to his feet. 

“Get up, boy!” Wulf snapped. “Get behind that wall!” Wulfric had his sword drawn, and he shoved Merlin into a staggering run. “Move!” 

Merlin went, reaching his feet and pushing his legs into a run. The knight’s horses were milling in the mouth of an alley. The knights were shouting, and he heard his name being blared, but he dog-legged in his run. Just this side of them was a low wall, and he launched himself over it into the dark like a salmon leaping over a dam. 

He found himself in a narrow dark space in a tangle of soggy bean runners, on his hands and knees. It was pitch dark back here. He turned to shout at Wulfric, but found himself alone. He grasped the stones of the wall, pulled himself upright, and looked over the wall. 

It had only been a few seconds since Mal’s cry, but they were ready for action. His fire blazed alone in the centre, lighting the deserted Top with a dim gold glare. 

To his right, he could see the knights over the wall, but not their horses. As he looked, he saw Arthur’s steel body glinting in the starlight as he arrived in his saddle, and around him all the rest of them the same. Merlin saw the glinting of their lance-heads. The knights were ready, horses braced in formation, lances held vertical so that they could manoevre. 

As he looked, across the dark space between them, he saw Arthur turn in his saddle and stare straight at him. 

He twisted away, to stare across to the other side of the dark Top. 

The archers were against a wall to his left, their longbows bent back ready. Wulfric was with them, the only one without a bow. Cullinan stood braced before them, his bow drawn and his teeth bared. All of them were looking up into the sky. Their nocked arrows were tracking something moving above them, and he snapped his head up to stare up. 

There it was! It was a splatter of inky black moving against the stars. It was there, and it was huge, growing, and a scream split the sky as it dropped out of the night onto the Top. 

He’d forgotten how big it was! Its wings beat, bating the air, sending a whirl of sparks flying from the fire. The fire glared on the heavy russet feathers of its wings and its talons dug into the rocky grit of the Top. The beak gaped, and that awful scream sawed out again. 

“Shoot!” 

The first flight of arrows flicked out. 

Those were full-sized yew longbows, armed with vicious bodkin arrows. He’d seen a longbow punch a shaft through steel plate, once. He’d seen them punch through flesh and mail and wood … but they bounced off the gryphon’s side and spun away like twigs.

He saw its huge head snake around to see where its prey had disappeared to. It saw prey! Its eyes fixed on the small group of archers. It sprang clumsily around, balancing with outstretched wings.

“Shoot!” Cullinan roared. 

_“Bregdan anweal gafeluc!”_ Merlin threw his hand out, trying to send his magic out with the next flight of arrows, but they flicked away too fast, too damn fast! The spell spiralled out into nothing behind the tiny shafts; useless. “Shit!” 

The archers whipped up their next arrows, nocked them, and dragged the strings back to their cheeks, each man standing tall behind the tiny scrap of wood that was his weapon. 

He needed to cast faster! _“Bregdan anweal gafeluc!”_ Merlin flung his magic out, trying to send it with the next arrow, and the next. _“Bregdan anweal gafeluc! Bregdan anweal gafeluc!”_ Arrow after arrow flew towards the beast, which heaved its massive body into its incongrous gallop. _“Bregdananwealdgafeluc!”_ The archers were drawing back arrow after arrow, and snapping them off into the dark as fast as they could, but every arrow simply bounced off… they were going too fast for the spell! 

_”Bregdan anweal- Bregdan anwe- Bregdan-Bregdan-Bregdan! Bregdananwealgafeluc!”_ Merlin screamed. He threw his hand out onto the top of the wall, and sighted along it. _”Bregdan-! Bregdan!”_ Two more arrows, bouncing off uselessly. The arrows flew too fast in the air. They flew faster than he could shout, faster than the spell could take hold. 

There had to be a better way of doing this! 

Time! He snatched at time, and wrenched it sideways out of alignment. Suddenly arrows flew through glue. _“Bregdan anweal gafeluc!”_ he shouted into the silence surrounding him. He saw an arrow leap from Dinadan’s bow, the tips of the bow twanging straight and the string jumping back and the arrow vibrating like a living thing as it swam across the Top. The spell spun its way out from Merlin’s hand. It spiralled out into the air like a corkscrew, churning its way to its target, weaving itself around the length of the arrow, but it was still too slow! He could take himself out of time, but to mate the spell with the arrow they had to align. The spell could not travel faster than the arrow, and the arrow could not travel more slowly than the gryphon. 

Time snapped back. Of the whole flight of arrows, one arrow, _just one,_ traced a blue line across the Top, and stuck into the monster’s shoulder. The rest bounced harmlessly and spun away to the ground. 

The monster’s beak gaped wide, and it leaped into the air, talons out stretched for its prey, and Cullinan roared, “Back!” 

Not a moment before, and not a second too soon, the tiny knot of archers spun on their heels and launched themselves over the wall, their red cloaks flaring wildly as they dropped out of sight. 

The gryphon screamed, and its wings clapped out, and it turned its spring into a take-off. Its first downbeat lifted it up, into the air, its tail whipping across the Top. As it went, Merlin got a glimpse of one arrow stuck to its shoulder like a dart. It beat for height, with another scream, lifting itself away from the light until the dark swallowed it up. 

Just as it had done in the forest, Merlin realized. Arthur was right. It didn’t pursue what it couldn’t see. 

He let himself sag against the wall, and found himself gulping for breath. 

He had to come up with a faster way to launch the spell. The arrows flew from bow to target too fast for _Bregdan anweald gafeluc_ to attach itself. A lance travelled more slowly, and that was easy, just the right speed, but arrows … he racked his brains for a similar spell, or to try to adjust _Bregdan anweadl gafeluc_ in such a way that it flew faster. 

The monster hadn’t come back, he realized. A great silence had fallen over Hammer Tor. He looked right and left to see where the others were. 

On the other side, heads were appearing above the wall. He saw Cullinan’s fierce black brows, scowling up at the sky as if the gryphon had insulted him personally. 

“Merlin,” he heard Arthur’s voice, “Are you all right over there?”

“I’m all right!” he called back. Arthur was on horseback, his knights behind him. They had come out of the alleyway, but were milling around, their lances still vertical. 

“Why didn’t you charge?” Iorik shouted, angrily, at Arthur. “We had it on the ground!”

“What were we supposed to do, then, fly?” Gawain shouted back. 

“That’s enough!” Arthur barked at Gawain. He rode forward, to call across the Top to Cullinan. “It wasn’t down long enough, Cully! We need a few more yards to get up to full gallop.” 

“We’ll try again.” 

“Your goddamn arrows just bounced off it!” Gawain shouted. 

“One pierced it!”

“One’s not enough! You need to use bigger magic!” 

“Bigger magic?” Iorik yelled. _“Bigger magic?_ I’ll come over there and give you _bigger magic!”_

“I said, _THAT’S ENOUGH!”_

Merlin, from his hiding place, could see Arthur’s face turn purple with the force of his roar. Arthur had a good set of lungs, and the rage in his voice was impressive. The two combatants immediately shut up. Cullinan reached back with his hand and swatted at Iorik’s head with one palm. 

“Shouting at each other in the face of the enemy won’t help, idiot! Shit fucking happens; deal with it!” 

“Thank you, Sir Cullinan!” Arthur called, the anger still vibrating in his voice. 

“We need to get that thing back again!” Cullinan called, climbing back over the wall. “So that Wulf and– So that Wulf can have another go at it.” 

“Wait for it,” Arthur called. “It’ll come. It can see us here.” He wheeled Hengroen, and rode away. “Form up, but don’t go back into the alley,” Arthur said to the knights. 

Merlin leaned against the wall. 

To his right, the horses were shifting nervously, jiggling their riders. They’d seen the monster, now, and they knew what they were facing. To his left, Cullinan’s men clambered back over the wall, picked up their arrows – they’d already stuck a whole row of them head-first into the thin soil, ready to use – and nocked them. Iorik looked like he was grinding his teeth, but he kept his mouth shut. 

“As soon as it comes down, charge at it!” Merlin heard Arthur say to his knights. “We can’t depend on the archers to cripple it for us. If you get a chance, strike home! _Merlin!_ Stay where you are, you have a good field of view. ” 

Merlin managed to strangle an automatic acknowledgement of “Sire,” and convert it into a weird mewing noise. It occurred to him that, positioned midway between archers and knights, he alone could hear the conversations from both sides. He hoped that none of the arrows went astray and hit any of them. 

They waited.

Dinadan trotted forward to pick up spent arrows from the open ground. He roamed quickly over the ground like a scenting hound, plucking up arrows as rapidly as he could. Cocking an eye up at the sky, he trotted back to his companions, and the arrows were redistributed. 

They waited some more. 

“It’s gone,” Mal said, and then doubted himself. “Is it gone?” 

“It’s not gone,” Cullinan said. “It can see us. Wait for it, it’ll be back.”

As if in reply, there was a distant scream in the air. The horses jumped, but nothing happened. The monster was taking its time. Licking its wounds? Or waiting for its moment?

Merlin heard the sound of footfalls and lowered his gaze to see that Wulfric had walked around the edges of the Top toward him. “Evening,” Wulfric greeted, as if they’d bumped into each other outside the Sun. “Nice night for a battle, isn’t it?”

Merlin grinned at him, although he could feel tremors inside himself. 

“Shouldn’t you be with your brother?”

“I might be more use here with you. You had a bit of a problem back there, didn’t you?” 

He lowered his voice. “The arrows go too fast for the spell,” he admitted. 

“You’re going to have to change the spell.”

He was going to have to devise an alternative to _Bregdan anweal gafeluc._ It was ancient and time-tested and battle-worn, but he was going to have to come up with something better, _right now._ “I’m trying to think of something.” 

“We don’t have much time,” Wulfric told him. “The tide will be turning soon, and my strength will start falling.”

“The tide?”

“My strength is tied to the sea.”

“Sea magic?” Merlin turned his head to look at the knights, and to his dread, he found Arthur looking directly at him. Arthur’s gaze struck him straight in the raw nerve of his guilt. What must Arthur be thinking, right now? Their sorcerer had left his battle station to wander over to Arthur’s servant and have a casual chat… why on earth would he want to talk to Merlin _now?_ What on earth would he and Merlin have to talk _about?_

“You shouldn’t be here,” he jittered. “Ar- Sir Andrew is going to notice.” 

“Let him.”

“Did you talk to him about it?”

“I did. But I didn’t have to tell him very much. He told me more than I told him, actually, he-” 

“Well, fuck this for a game of soldiers! We don’t have all fucking night!” Cullinan barked, drawing Merlin’s eyes. He had been leaning against the side of a house, but now he stood up, bristling with anger. He drew his sword with an angry jerk and marched forward. “Get your fat arse back down here!”

“What are you _doing?”_ Arthur demanded. 

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Cullinan barked back. He marched over to the fire, and stood shaking his sword at the sky. “You up there! _You!_ Yeah, you! Look down here, damn you, here’s _meat!_ You want to eat my boys? Come down here and try to take a bite out of _me_ instead! Get your fat fucking chicken arse back down here, we’re not finished fucking killing you yet!”

“Oh, _God,”_ Wulfric groaned, next to Merlin. 

_“Heeeere,_ chicken chicken! Pwwwk pwk pwk pwk!” Cullinan jumped up and down, and capered madly around the fire. “Pwwwk pwk pwk pwk! Come and eat me so we can kill you! _Heeeere,_ chicken chicken!” 

He had the undivided attention of every living thing on Hammer Tor, including the horses, Merlin noticed. 

_“Heeere,_ chicken chicken! Uncle Cully has a nice sword for you! Come and get it! It’s all yours! I’m too old and grumpy to sit around all night waiting for you! _Heeere,_ chicken chicken.” 

Merlin heard laughter. “He’ll never live that down,” Ellyan said. 

“Eh, if it works it works, who cares?” Gawain said. 

“On me!” Arthur said, and kicked Hengroen into a canter. The knights followed him, and they cantered around the Top as if they were in a practice arena. Arthur led them at a sedate canter as if he was riding in an arena, just as if he was leading a riding lesson and not offering himself up as dancing bait. The knights all followed him in neat line-ahead at the same pace. 

Cullinan paused for a moment to stare at then, and then resumed his jumping. “Here’s some horsies for you too! Come, chicken-chicken, come and get ‘em! Heere, chicken chick-”

There was a shrill scream above them, and the thump of wings. 

“Shit-it-worked!” Cullinan whipped around on his heel, put his head down and bolted for the nearest wall as fast as his legs could pump. 

“Lances couched!” Arthur shouted. 

“Do it!” Wulfric hissed at Merlin. 

And then the monster was down, huge and fierce and frightening, and lunging in a low stoop across the top. It shot like a huge arrow over the knights’ heads, not landing at all but lunging after Cullinan, talons reaching out to grab him as he ran _straight for Merlin’s hiding place._

The archers were whipping arrows out in the air.

Cullinan ran, his arms and fists pumping, his eyes wide and his mouth sucking air.

The massive stony talons were reaching out for Cullinan, the beak gaping wide just above it. 

Cullinan dropped flat, heedlessly headfirst, and smacked full length into the ground. The gryphon over-reached and the talons slashed the air just above his body. 

Too many arrows were in the air, too little time, but the arrows were _chasing_ the gryphon now, rushing _towards_ Merlin. Merlin threw out his hand, time and power and terror twitching in his blood, and screamed, _“Bregdeanweald arewangefellanrightNOW!”_

The spell surged out, not in a spiral to meet the arrows but in a blanket. The gryphon blasted through the spell, but the arrows punched through it like needles and each needle plucked a hole in it. The arrows latched onto the spell, not the reverse, snatching the spell after them, and they flew faster than the spell could fly. They flew faster than the gryphon itself could fly, and Merlin felt them thud home in hot flesh. 

The gryphon’s head whiplashed back with sudden pain as the arrows slammed into it. It roared and turned in mid air, reaching back with its beak to the sudden pain, but it was flying too fast to stop, too fast to turn. It was out of control and it was coming straight at him... 

He couldn’t help it, he clamped his eyes shut and threw his hands up to defend his head. He heard a hoarse roar of _“Ic the withdraf!”_ close by. 

The gryphon’s roar turned into a shriek, and there was stunning down-draught of air that smacked against his body; then a scream, and a thump, and a mighty multi-toned crash. 

_“It’s doooown!”_ someone screamed. 

He opened his eyes and moved his hands. He was still alive. Wulfric was still alive, still standing, and the gryphon had not landed on top of them. Wulfric’s head was turned to the side, to Merlin’s right, and Merlin turned to see what had become of the gryphon. 

At first his mind didn’t make sense of what he was seeing. There was no gryphon over there where Wulfric was looking. 

There was only a tangle of stones and timbers, and a cloud of dust and falling thatch … a roar sounded from inside it. Wait … that had been a house, right there! And the gryphon had come down on its roof. It was now battering around inside the wreckage, trying to free itself like an angry bull from the stone walls and fallen timbers. As he stared, stones and dust flew, and another roar sounded. 

Cullinan pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. “Good shot!” he said, surprised, and then laughed fiercely “Let’s go get it!” He scrambled to his feet, snatched up his fallen sword and raced across the Top. 

Wulfric heaved himself over the wall, and ran after his brother as fast as he could. There were others racing to the collapsed house from the other side – Dinadan was first, waving his sword. He sprang over the first fallen stones and disappeared from sight behind the surviving corner of the house. 

The roar increased, accompanied by crashing noises. A fresh cloud of dust flew, and a wingtip flapped above the level of the stones. The gryphon was in there, wounded and dangerously angry, but most importantly of all it was _DOWN._

Merlin scrambled hurriedly over the wall. His own sword hadn’t even been drawn yet, and he drew it now and ran over as quickly as he could on Wulfric’s heels. In the dark and the dustcloud, he could get a shot at it without anyone seeing. He had to get inside that house! 

There was another roar, and the remaining wall shook. More stones tumbled, and a long russet head rammed itself out, free of the wreckage. Its beak gaped in another scream. Merlin came to a stop, his sword loose in his hand. He could hear screams of rage and bloodlust from the men in the building as well as the gryphon. 

The long head disappeared momentarily and then surged up again, as the gryphon freed its shoulders. It shook its head from side to side, smashing itself against its trap, and then it reared up. It threw out its wings and flung itself up and forward, and as it came free Merlin saw to his shock that Dinadan was clinging to its shoulder, his sword flashing as he tried to dig it into the thing’s flesh. 

“Get off, get off!” he screamed, hopelessly, knowing that Dinadan could not hear him. But he was too late. The gryphon surged upright, huge, monstrous in its rage. It shook its wings free, and one massive set of talons plucked Dinadan off as if he was no bigger than a duckling and threw him aside. 

Dinadan landed on his back on the stones with an audible crack. 

The gryphon opened its wings; battered and bleeding but free at last, and horribly angry. 

“Charge!” 

The voice snapped into Merlin’s mind, and yanked him back into the present, and he became aware of the drumming of heavy hooves. _Arthur’s charge!_ and he jerked around to look at the onrushing weight of metal – couched lances, hurtling at full gallop, and all four steel tips aiming at the gryphon’s heart.

The gryphon’s head snaked down again, and its eyes focused on its tiny tormentor. It threw itself up onto its hind legs, battered wings reaching out into the air. 

Dinadan sprawled on his back. 

Merlin spun himself around. He knew what to do now. He had done this before… He threw his hand out and focused his fingers on Arthur, on the sharp steel tip of Arthur’s lance. 

_“Bregdan anweal gafeluc!”_

The spell sang out, fierce and blue. It wound like a living creature around the end of Arthur’s lance, and wove itself around the point. 

It took no magic for time to seem to stand still. He saw it all as if it was etched in a single lens. Hengroen was stretched out at full gallop, his thick neck reaching out for speed, with Arthur hunched over his withers with the lance couched. 

The gryphon sprang into the air, its talons stabbing down for the tiny human on the ground, its hatred focused on Dinadan, to the exclusion of all else. The lance flew to meet it. It seemed as if flesh and steel were drawn together by an invisible thread, as if the lance was reeling itself in, as if the lance knew its job and was pursuing its prey with a will of its own. 

Arthur shouted. 

The gryphon and the lance met each other with a meaty slamming noise. The steel point bit deep into the tawny breast. The gryphon seemed to throw its head up and wrap around its death like a dying bird, its wings folding forward. Its body was driven up and over into the ruins of the house, and Arthur released the lance as it was yanked out of his grasp. Hengroen flung his head up, set his great hocks sliding to stop his gallop, and came to a halt just short of the wall. 

The gryphon screamed, once, and then there was silence. Its tail slumped to the ground. 

The rest of the charge arrived around Hengroen and Arthur, hooves skittering on stone with nerves. Knights bared their teeth in victory, and fists were pumped in the air. Gawain’s horse reared, feathered forelegs lashing the air with excitement. Cullinan and his men were clambering around the wreckage, clambering over the dead gryphon. Merlin could see their swords flashing. Distantly, Merlin heard shouts of triumph and query and congratulations. 

Merlin stood where he was, hollowed out and momentarily forgotten. _I did it,_ he told himself, tiredly. _I did it._

He saw Arthur dismount and release Hengroen, who trotted away with his head and tail high. He felt, rather than heard, Hengroen’s neigh to the other horses. _All is well. The monster is gone. My humans killed it._

He saw Arthur run to the gryphon. Arthur’s sword alone could pierce the creature’s hide. He saw Arthur raise his sword above his head like a shovel, and drive the point down vertically into the gryphon’s throat – making sure of his kill. 

“Merlin!” Arthur called from where he stood over the fallen gryphon, pointing at Dinadan. 

_I did it,_ Merlin told himself, tiredly. _I’m good at killing things._

Cullinan was climbing out of the wreckage of the building, sheathing his sword, and running to Dinadan. 

_“Merlin!”_ Arthur roared, and his anger snapped Merlin back into awareness of where he was. He ran across the Top, and knelt by Dinadan’s fallen body. 

Dinadan lay on his back, his head lolling and his face grey. 

Merlin grasped the red cloak, and dragged it out of the way. Dinadan’s body was encased in chain mail, but even with that he could see that there was something very wrong with the lie of his arm and the mould of his shoulder. 

“Crush wound,” he said. “Broken humerus, broken scapula. His clavicle’s chalk. Ribs? Maybe spine injuries.” He touched Dinadan’s throat and felt his pulse. It was tapping away. He lowered his head to Dinadan’s chest, but there was no sound of wheezing. 

Wulfric appeared on Dinadan’s other side. His hands appeared in Merlin’s field of vision, feeling and exploring. Merlin felt a spell probe Dinadan’s chest. “His lungs are all right,” Wulfric said. 

Dinadan was beginning to come back to consciousness. His head jerked this way and that. “Oh, oh, oh,” he mumbled, and his eyes opened blearily and then squeezed into agonised slits. “Oh, it hurts, it hurts.” 

“It’s all right, Din; it’s going to be all right,” Wulfric promised him. 

“We need to get the chain mail off him first,” Merlin said. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the ring of faces around them. “Gawaine – my saddle bags. The medical bag, and the wire-cutters. Percival – fetch a blanket. Make it two! Ellyan, Malcolm, get some fresh water and warm it up over the fire! Iorik – splints and a bandage to tie it up. Go on, move-move-move!” He shooed them off with both hands and the audience scurried off. 

He heard Arthur order someone else to go with him to make sure the gryphon was truly dead and not merely stunned. “Fetch something to cut off its head!” he heard Arthur shout. 

“Can you do something?” Cullinan said to Wulfric. 

“We can do something about the pain, at least.” Wulfric put his hand on Dinadan’s forehead and tipped his head back, ready to whisper a spell. 

“No!” Merlin grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand away from Dinadan’s brow. “Never make a healing spell without checking a person for charms first!” 

“My friends know better than to pick up magical junk without telling me first!” Wulfric shook off his hand. He put his palm on Dinadan’s brow again, closed his eyes to concentrate, and whispered into the air. _“Hierste ábryrdnysse to feallanne.”_

Dinadan’s moan of pain wound down. “Oh,” he said, sleepily. “That’s better.” Wulfric rocked back on his heels. 

“Wire-cutters!” Gawain announced himself, and the tool was pressed against Merlin’s shoulder. 

Merlin took the wire-cutters, and flexed them open and closed. “Go and help Arthur with … things,” Merlin said. 

“Aye aye, Captain,” Gawain said, sarcastically, but he departed anyway. 

Merlin opened the wire cutters. “Oh, God,” he muttered, looking down at the hideous lumpy shape of Dinadan’s shoulder. “This is way beyond what I can treat. He needs a trained physician.” 

“And you’re a physician’s apprentice?” Wulfric asked. 

“I’ve got the book-knowledge for it.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no-one but himself, Wulfric and Cullinan were in earshot. “But I don’t have the magic for it,” he hissed under his breath. “I can treat a sprain, or lance a boil, or strap up a rib so that it’ll heal on its own. But this… I’m no good at healing spells!”

“You’re better at the killing-things magic, then, I take it?” Cullinan said. 

“Yes!” Merlin admitted. “I’m sorry, but there it is! If I try to help him, I might do more harm than good.”

“Don’t worry, lad. I’m good at the healing spells,” Wulfric said. “Thirty years of practice. You tell me what to do, with your book knowledge, and I’ll do it. We’ll manage between the two of us. Cully, sing out if anyone comes back. Tell ‘em the docs need privacy to work.”

“Right-o,” Cullinan agreed. 

“Ready, lad?” Wulfric said to Merlin. 

Merlin opened the jaws of the wire-cutters, ready to start cutting Dinadan’s armour off his body, and drew in a deep breath. “I’m ready.” 

……………………………………..

Merlin was shaken awake by Iorik. “Your turn to watch,” Iorik said. 

He opened his eyes. The sky above was still dark. “My turn,” he agreed. He sat up, and looked around at the camp. 

All around him, the sleeping knights lay silent and still. The dim glow of the fire played over the folds of blankets and slack sleeping limbs. Nobody had volunteered to sleep in the houses after all. Instead they had all settled down to sleep around the fire, under the sky. There was no gryphon to fear any longer, and the prospect of rain before morning was a great deal less intimidating than the houses full of ghosts. Merlin was surrounded by limp figures like the lone night-watchman at a midsummer’s eve drinking party. 

Only one figure was upright and wide awake. To his surprise, Arthur sat on the bench, elbows on knees, his back to Merlin. His golden head was lowered to gaze at the fire, and one arm was poking idly at the logs with a stick.

Merlin turned his head up to stare at Iorik, before the other man could move away. “I didn’t know we were doing two-at-a-time again,” he whispered. 

“We’re not,” Iorik said. “He says he can’t sleep.” 

Iorik trudged over and lay down, in the blankets he had obviously left when he was woken for his watch. “Night, night,” he said, cheerfully. “If the monsters carry you off … don’t call me.” He rolled over, his back to the fire, and worked his shoulder to get the top edge of his blanket over his ear. 

Merlin got up. His blankets fell away from him, so that the cold air tried to bite him awake. He wrapped the blanket over his shoulders like a shawl and stepped over to look on Dinadan’s condition. 

Dinadan was deeply unconscious, as well he should be after what Merlin had given him to drink. Arthur’s blankets, he had noticed, had been added to the bedding that swathed him. His face was flushed, and his pulse was a little fast. Merlin turned his eyes up to the night sky, and silently breathed a small spell Gaius had taught him for gently bolstering an injured person’s constitution. 

He stood up, and waited a full minute to make sure that his spell had taken hold and wasn’t going to blast his patient too far out the other side into a raging delerium. 

Then he turned around, and walked over to the fire, with his blanket still huddled around himself. Arthur looked up at him, let a brief smile cross his face, and then gazed away into the fire again. Merlin sat down on the other end of the bench. 

“You’re up late,” Merlin observed quietly. He arranged the blanket around himself like a lady’s skirts. 

“I have been thinking.” 

“You want to watch that,” Merlin told him, “Gaius tells me it can be habit-forming.” 

Arthur didn’t respond. He pulled the stick out of the embers and examined the charred end. He still wore his mail shirt, and the bright red cloak. Hasn’t he slept at all? “Are you missing Gwen?” Merlin asked, sleepily. His blankets had been so snug. 

The mention of Gwen brought a smile to the pouting lips, at least. The warm light caressed his cheeks. “Yes,” Arthur agreed serenely. “Very much, but we’ll see each other soon enough. How is your patient?”

“He’ll live, but there’s nothing we could do about his shoulder.” 

“Wulfric used magic to mend his other broken bones,” Arthur said.

“The problem with his shoulder isn’t the bone. It’s the glenohumeral joint. See, the shoulder joint rests in a sort of socket, and it has a network of ligaments and muscles that let it turn, and there are three bones that meet there, and … Well,” Merlin stopped, realizing that in his sleepiness he was descending into an anatomy lesson. “The whole joint is damaged. It’s more than I can deal with.” 

“We’ll take him to Gaius tomorrow,” Arthur promised. 

Merlin raised the edge of his blanket and draped it over the top of his head like a cowl. He wanted to go back to sleep, so instead he asked, “What are you going to do tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Tomorrow, we’ll go to Greensward. Then Cullinan will take the gryphon’s head to Mercia, and we’ll take Din with us to Camelot.”

“That’s what we’re going to do tomorrow,” Merlin said. “What are _you_ going to do tomorrow? You can’t keep up this pretence for much longer.” 

He didn’t need to say that the knights and Merlin would help him keep it up as long as Arthur chose. They would willingly die for him, and Arthur knew it. It was little enough in comparison to indulge his sense of humour. 

Arthur was quiet for a moment, long enough for Merlin to worry. Then Arthur turned on the bench, to look around the camp. Merlin looked around as well, but they were all asleep, the lucky devils.

Arthur straightened on the bench and stared into the fire, his eyes flickering with reflected firelight. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a new day, Merlin,” he said, sombrely. “Tomorrow will be a day for making confession and coming clean. We’ve all got something to confess, haven’t we?”

“What are you going to do?”

Arthur abandoned his charred stick to the flames, and rubbed his palms together. “For one thing, I’m going to offer Cullinan a knighthood.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he’s earned it.” Arthur smiled, and wagged one finger at Cully as he slept. “There aren’t many knights who have earned their spurs by pretending to be a chicken, and I’m sure he’ll never live it down, but that’s beside the point. It took courage to run out there on foot.”

Merlin looked at Cullinan. Fast asleep, his lined face with its black brows looked weary, not fierce. “He might still be an enemy.”

“I think he’s not an enemy any more.”

“You’re trusting without reason.” 

“Trusting _with_ reason hasn’t done me much good lately. I’m going with my instinct, Merlin.” 

”As long as your instincts aren’t telling you what you want to hear.” He yawned. 

Arthur wasn’t looking at him. He was gazing deeply into the fire, as if some script for his next words lay coded there, and he was trying to decipher it. “My father never ever changed his mind. Make an enemy of him once – just once, Merlin – and he would never, ever forget. He never forgave an insult, or bent a rule, not for anyone, or any reason.”

“I remember.” 

“When I met Morgana two weeks ago, I was shocked. Not because of how much she’s changed, but because it was as if my father was looking out of her eyes. Morgana is every inch his daughter; magic or no magic. Gwen can’t understand why she would order the people’s crops burned, but I do, because my father would have done exactly the same.”

“I’m sorry, are we speaking allegorically here? Because I don’t know what that has to do with Cullinan.”

“Don’t you?” Arthur glanced at him, and smiled briefly. “Actually, it has nothing to do with Cullinan.”

Arthur picked up another stick, and began poking it at the fire, as if he was discontented with the way those logs lay. He dug at the fire, until one of the logs rolled over and a sudden flare of light blazed as hot embers met air. 

“Besides,” he said into the fire. “I owe Cully for his chicken dance. It’s my fault that he had to do it at all, and he nearly got killed for it. I should have led the charge out as soon as the gryphon landed, but I didn’t. My mind wasn’t on the job. I was distracted at a crucial moment.”

“Really?” 

The charred stick bobbed in the air, and Arthur’s eyes, gazing at it, didn’t seem focused. “I was too busy looking at you.”

“Me?” Arthur couldn’t have been looking at him. “Don’t be silly, I was behind a wall…” … _casting spells as fast as I could …_

A sudden thrill of horror ran over his skin like a wave, from the nape of his neck to his elbows, as all the hairs stood on end. All of a sudden, he was wide awake. “Wait, what did you say?” he said, chilled. 

“I saw what you were doing.” 

Arthur turned on the bench to look at him, and his blue eyes were suddenly focused closely on Merlin’s face. They seemed as huge as the night sky. 

Arthur didn’t. He couldn’t have. “No, you didn’t.” 

“I did. I saw you.” 

Merlin sprang to his feet. The bench jumped under Arthur’s weight. “Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t see it! There’s a perfectly innocent explanation for it, so don’t jump to any conclusions!” 

Arthur jumped to his feet so quickly that the rickety bench fell over. “Merlin, I know what I saw. I know magic when I see it.” He held out his hand, and reached out as if to grasp Merlin’s blanket. “Wait!” 

Merlin pulled his arm away, out of Arthur’s reach. “No!” 

“It’s all right, idiot! Come here-!” He made another grabbing gesture, reaching out, and Merlin shied away. He stumbled over something behind him, something that grunted and moved against the back of his knees. He lost his balance and fell over backwards the obstacle with a crash that jarred his bones. 

Sir Gawain sat up. “Whuh? Alarm bell?” 

“No!” Merlin thrashed his way clear. He scrambled backward on rump, heels and hands, until he could flip himself over. He made his feet, and bolted away as fast as he could. 

“Merlin!” 

“No!” he flung back, as he ran. 

The alleyway between the nearest two houses was dark, and led downhill. He heard a jumble of voices behind him, but he did not slow down. He tore down the alley in the dark, tripped over something, caught himself, fell onto hands and knees, got up, stumbled on. 

“Merlin!” he heard Arthur’s voice behind him. 

He took a sharp corner around a looming house, and ran on, so as to get out of Arthur’s line of sight. Arthur could run faster than he could. He couldn’t escape Arthur by running. He had to get out of the alleyway, and put a barrier between them. He could duck through one of the houses, and out the other side; he could disappear. He would thread his way down from Hammer Tor, and escape across the fields. 

And then … And then … He didn’t know what he would do _then._ He only knew that Arthur _knew._ His secret was out, and he had to get away. 

He crashed into a door shoulder-first, hurt his shoulder, remembered that doorhandles needed to be turned. His scrabbling fingers found the doorhandle with his hand, and he threw himself into the darkness inside. The room beyond was pitch black but he had grown up in a house much like this one, and he staggered half-bent across the room with one hand held out at knee height to feel for obstacles, in search of the other door. 

… Only to find that there _was_ no other door on the other side. 

“Merlin!” 

Shit! He turned in a circle. Jump through the window? It was only a layer of thin hide, unshuttered. 

“Merlin!” 

No time. Arthur would hear it. He felt around frantically. Something wood and square. Damp fabric, and a square upright post at the corner – the end of a bed? Yes. He threw himself down on the floor between the wall and the side of the bed, into the deepest darkest corner of the room. He wedged his back into the corner, wriggled himself as deeply into the dark as he could, and stopped moving. 

“Merlin.” 

The voice, the most beloved voice in the world, was right there. Not out in the street, but across the room. _Stay still, stay still, he won’t come in here, he doesn’t know which house you’re in. He’ll go away, and you can run away from here._

“Merlin.” Arthur’s voice. “I know you’re in here. If you want to hide you should learn to close the door behind you.” He could hear the smile in Arthur’s voice. 

He pressed his hands across his mouth. _He’s bluffing._

“Merlin.”

 _Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe._ Arthur had ears like a bat. 

“All right, idiot, if that’s the way you want to play it.” He heard the sounds of chainmail clinking, and the thumping of a large man in heavy boots sitting down on a hard dirt floor. 

He wasn’t bluffing. Merlin was trapped. 

There was a long silence from the doorway. What was Arthur doing over there, having a quiet nap? He didn’t dare raise his head over the level of the bed to look. He was in the dark, safe. For the thousandth time, the millionth time, he wished with all his heart that he knew how to do the ‘disappearing in a whirlwind’ trick. 

What was he going to do when the sun came up? 

“This is going to sound mad,” Arthur said, conversationally. “Maybe I am mad? I think I must be mad. I get confirmation, actual incontrovertible visual _proof,_ that one of my nearest and dearest is using magic, and the first thing I feel is …” Arthur swallowed, noisily enough for Merlin to hear, “Relief! How mad is that? _Relief!_ At last! Proof! I wasn’t imagining it after all!” Arthur laughed. 

It was nothing to laugh about. His heart was thumping in his chest, painfully constricting his throat. There was a damp tightness in his eyes, but he refused to wipe them. 

“It’s been going around and around in my head for two whole weeks, Merlin. I thought I was going crazy. It can’t be true. Is he, or isn’t he? Did I imagine it, or was it real? No, it can’t be. Not on your life - not our Merlin! No, you have to have been imagining it, Arthur. It can’t be!”

Oh, God. If Arthur had been thinking about it for two weeks, there was really no way for Merlin to cover it up. All was lost. He had no choice. He would have to run away. 

“I suppose you want to know how I know. I remembered, Merlin. I remembered fleeing to Ealdor. Concussed, my bum. I’ve been enchanted before, I know what it feels like, and as soon as the memories started coming back… well. But even then, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t be sure what I was remembering was real. It felt like a dream, like a hallucination.” 

Merlin rubbed his nose on his sleeve. Yes, he should have added an element of forgetfulness in there. Simple was not the same as brain-dead.

“And of course, I couldn’t ask, either, could I?” Arthur asked. “I couldn’t find out without asking, and I couldn’t ask, without you knowing that I’d found out. I talked about it with Gwen, late at night and we went around and around in circles, without getting anywhere. Stuck. Can’t know unless I ask, can’t ask unless I know.” 

No more than Merlin could have asked Arthur if he knew, without Arthur noticing that there was something to be known. The old conundrum that had plagued Merlin for so long had been going around and around in Arthur’s head too – for two whole weeks. 

“You’re still a terrible liar, you know. Really. The worst. I can always tell when you’re lying. But you’re _clever._ You lie so badly, and then you let everyone jump to their own conclusions about what you’re lying _about._ I’ve always known you were lying through your teeth about _something,_ and I always thought I knew what it was about. Ooh, Merlin’s got a little bit of a _phobia._ Merlin’s terrified of magic. Merlin’s terrified of an awful _lot_ of things, but _most_ of all he’s terrified of magic.” 

Yes. He was going to have to run away. If Arthur knew, Arthur would inevitably put everything else together in his mind too. Arthur would work out what Merlin had done; what Merlin was able to do; what Merlin was guilty of doing. He would find out who killed Agravaine, who killed Uther, who poisoned Morgana, who released the dragon. His name, in Arthur’s view, would be anathema. This was the end. 

His heart was beating so hard that it hurt, and his eyes burned.

“You didn’t actually lie, you just fibbed here and there, and let me invent my own story to fill in the blanks. You let me lie to myself. When I think of how many different stories I came up with… How many explanations, how many complicated rationalisations, how many questions I thought I’d answered ... It all got so complicated, all the lies I _thought_ I saw through, and then suddenly right in front of me was the answer to _all_ the questions. All the lies have _one_ answer, don’t they, Merlin?”

 _I’m so sorry, Arthur!_ He was going to cry. He couldn’t stop it. He could feel the tears building up in his eyes, and any second now one would spill over and run down his face. 

“How come is it always Merlin who warns everyone about … well, everything?” Arthur’s tone changed, as if he was listing remembered events on his fingers. “Sir Valiant? The Lamia? That damned shrine? Cornelius Sigan? Her Majesty the Troll? But I still don’t understand everything. I have an answer, but now there are more questions. Why did your mother send you to Camelot in the first place? Why didn’t you take off with Morgana? What on earth are you still hanging around Camelot for?” 

_For you, Arthur. All for you. All of it, everything I’ve done in Camelot, has been for you._ Merlin put his hands over his eyes and pressed his fingertips into his eyelids, but the tears came in spite of him.

“So we came here. Very well. If Merlin’s got magic, let’s see what he does if he has to use it. Gryphons are magical creatures, aren’t they? Let’s go after a beast we’ve killed before, and let’s watch Merlin, and we’ll see what he does. And then tonight I _saw_ you behind the wall. And I thought, how many times has he done that? Standing in the dark, hiding around corners, blasting away behind my back without anyone noticing?” 

_I told you you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve saved your life._

“I can’t blame you for hiding it. My father would have killed you, without a second thought. The only thing that stings, Merlin,” his voice hiccupped a little bit, “the only thing that hurts is that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. You didn’t have to go through that alone. Did you seriously think that I would hand you over to my father? Really?”

_Oh, God, Arthur. If you knew how much I wanted to tell you, but there’s too much now! It’s too late!_

“My uncle was very quick to cast suspicion, you know. Both on you, and on Gaius. Obviously I know why, now. The missing piece of _that_ puzzle was the fact that he was betraying us himself, all along. I had a choice, between trusting him, and trusting you. And he sounded so very reasonable! I knew I had a spy, somewhere. And of course, I knew you were lying through your teeth about something.” 

And that was why Arthur hadn’t told him about the treaty with Nemeth. Arthur had already stopped trusting him. It wasn’t too late two weeks ago – it had been too late for months. 

“And then I saw Agravaine with Morgana, and I knew. I _understood.”_

The hot tears refused to stop coming, even though he tried to rub them out of his eyes, and his nose grew stuffy because he dared not sniff. 

“You killed him, didn’t you?” Arthur said, softly. “The dragon didn’t do it, no matter what people think. He was too far underground. The dragon’s breath couldn’t reach that far. No, _you_ did it. You said you were going back to set up a diversion, but you went back and you killed them all. Some diversion, Merlin! And to think I went looking for you because I was _worried_ about you!”

 _I’m sorry,_ he thought. _I killed your uncle…_ Arthur believed that magic was evil. He believed that he had lost both of his parents already to dark magic, and now Merlin had killed his uncle, too? He had cousins somewhere. Perhaps he should hide his cousins away, before Merlin got close to them, before Merlin accidentally butchered them as well? _You don’t need to tell me that I’m a monster. I killed scores of men, without even trying._

Fresh tears arrived from another, deeper well inside him. He folded his hands over the crown of his head, and pressed his forehead into his knees, curled up around his own misery.

Arthur’s tone suddenly changed. “Merlin, are you _actually_ crying over there? I can _hear_ you! Please blow your nose before you suffocate! Honestly, how an idiot like you managed to hide a thing like this for so long, I cannot imagine. It’s not as if you’re clever. And I don’t know what on earth you think you have to cry about. Blow your nose, Merlin! That’s an order!”

He wasn’t fooling Arthur. He was never going to be able to fool Arthur again. He pulled his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket, carefully, by feel. He opened it with his fingers and blew his nose into it as hard as he could, and then wiped his eyes on his sleeve. 

“There. Isn’t that better?” 

He recognised that tone of voice. That was smug pleased-with-himself prat over there, indulging in a spot of self-congratulation. 

“Now come over here, Merlin, and let’s go back to the fire.”

Oh, no. The embarrassment and shame that burned in him was too strong. NO, he was not going back to the fire. He was not going with Arthur; not to sit opposite him, brimming with the knowledge that Merlin had magic; not to sit and face a whole string of questions and cross examinations that he couldn’t evade any more. Arthur could not find out the whole truth. Last year, or the year before… but not now. The truth was too ugly. 

“Merlin, come here.” He heard the rising irritation in Arthur’s voice. 

_I can’t. You think you know, but you don’t. I can’t._

“Merlin, I’m pretty sure I just gave you an order. Now, I know you’re a sorcerer, and you might be letting that go to your head a little bit, but I am still the King in these parts and that makes me automatically the boss. Of anything. Anywhere in Camelot, and we are technically still in Camelot. So come here.” 

No. He mouthed the word silently. _I can’t. I can’t. You’ll see it in my eyes._

“Merlin, I am going to count to five, and if you’re not front-and-centre by the time I get to five I’m going to go and fetch a torch and find where-ever you’re hiding and drag you out of there by your ears. Now, Merlin.”

Great idea! Arthur could go and fetch a torch, and that would give him time to leg it for the open country as fast as he could go. He could travel much faster than Arthur could, even on foot. He folded his arms.

“One.”

He’d never see Camelot again, never see Gwen or Gaius again, or any of the knights. He’d never see his mother again, because Arthur knew where she was. He would have to go on the road, flee to the high seas the way Wulfric had, only friendless and alone. 

“Two.” 

He would have to leave Camelot, leave all the pageantry and drama of his life, and go back to being just another nobody. It would mean leaving Arthur. Leaving Arthur for ever; leaving behind the best friend he had ever made in his life. Never, ever to see Arthur again. 

“Three.” 

No, he couldn’t leave Arthur to fend for himself. Arthur needed him. The dollop-head wouldn’t last a week without him. He would have to come back to Camelot. He would set himself a disguise, something no-one would ever pierce. 

“Four.” 

Nobody could know who he was – he would never be Arthur’s Merlin again. His days of happy companionship, tagging along behind Arthur, were over. 

“Five. Right, that’s it! You’d better pick an ear, Merlin, because I’m going to grab one and use it as a Merlin-handle.” He heaved himself to his feet with a grunt, and Merlin heard the footsteps going off into the distance. 

Perhaps he could reappear to Arthur in disguise, and befriend him all over again? It would be too much just to watch from a distance and not be able to talk to him. He was Arthur’s servant, and he always would be, body and soul. His life was meant to be lived with Arthur – they were twins in the tide of destiny, if not by blood.

Arthur was going away. 

Merlin sat in the dark with his arms still folded around himself, and chewed on his lip. 

Arthur was going away?

Wait, Arthur couldn’t go away! Merlin was in serious trouble. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of his life peeling the barracks’ potatoes, he had to get after Arthur right now, and to hell with hiding. He scrambled to his feet and started feeling his way over to the door.

Arthur’s rules were usually very relaxed. Arthur tolerated Merlin taking his time about answering his call – as long as he answered Arthur’s call eventually. But if Arthur had to leave what he was doing and come _looking _for him… _that_ was disobedience. Magic or no magic, if he did not come when he was called, Arthur would be furious, and Merlin would be punished. And he had not come when he was called tonight. __

He pulled the door open, and hurried out. The narrow lane around him was dark and empty. He turned toward the Top, silhoetted against the moonlit clouds, and walked quickly to the corner. 

Arthur was a few yards away, marching away with the thumping steps of extreme irritation. 

“Wait!” Merlin called. 

Arthur stopped, and turned. Merlin couldn’t see Arthur’s face. “You!” Arthur’s finger jabbed out at him, and then redirected to stab at the ground right in front of him. “Here!”

Merlin cleared his throat, and trotted over, warily. He stopped in front of Arthur and put both hands over his ears. “Don’t pull my ears.”

“Pull your ears? _Pull your ears?_ I should pull them _off!_ Why didn’t you come when I called you?”

“I couldn’t! I was planning to … um.” 

Arthur spread his hands. “Well, what?” 

“Um.” It was beginning to dawn on him that he had just done something stupid. Why had he been worried about peeling potatoes if he was planning on never going back to Camelot? “I was waiting for you go away so that I could sneak out while you were getting a torch and run away and not come back.” 

“Then why are you standing there telling me about it?” 

Maybe he wasn’t so much seeing Arthur’s face, as hearing the expression from the exasperated tone of his voice. At least he didn’t sound angry, just incredulous. Merlin let go of his ears. 

“Er… ” He’d been caught up in the oldest, simplest and most unbreakable of enchantments – the habit of obedience. “I was scared that you were going to pull on my ears,” he said, sheepishly. 

He saw Arthur in the dark press his fingers to his temples, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark. He knew that look. “How – _how,_ in the name of all that’s holy – _how,_ Merlin, does someone as thick as you even _walk_ and _talk_ \- never mind hide something like this! You – you are beyond belief! 

“I’m sorry!” The tears starting coming again. 

“Oh, for God’s sake, what are you still _crying_ for?” 

“I’m sorry! I can’t help it!” 

“Listen to me, idiot. There’s nothing to cry about. Anyone would think _you_ were the one who just discovered a huge secret! Stop crying, and blow your nose.”

Merlin sniffed, and pulled his handkerchief out, folded it to a dry corner, and blew his nose into it. 

Arthur waited for him. “Better? Now listen to me. Just on the off chance that you need this to be spelled out in really small words, _I am not angry with you. _Have you got that? Do you need it in writing?”__

“Are you sure? You’re really not angry with me? Really?” he sniffed, and tried to wipe his tears away with his fingers. It seemed too good to be true. 

“Don’t you think I’d know if I was? I might have been, but I’ve had two weeks to get used to the idea.” 

It couldn’t be true. He was going to wake up any second. He had had a shock, and then misery, and now – this was too good to be true, it had to be, it was too easy, after all these years of lying and deception and fear… His knees wanted to buckle. “Really?” he asked again.

“Oh, you twit. Come here.” Before he could duck, Arthur’s long arms had reached out and seized his shoulders. He was yanked forward off his balance and clamped against Arthur’s chest, as tightly as if Arthur wanted to wring the unhappiness out of him by muscular force. The impact made his teeth jolt together. 

“There you go!” Arthur said, his breath hot against Merlin’s ear. “Do I feel angry with you?” 

Arthur had never hugged him before, but Merlin found that he fitted against his mailed body as if he had been there before. Arthur’s one arm was wrapped around his shoulder, and he felt the other hand close on the back of his head, pressing him close against Arthur’s shoulder. He was being squeezed, the air pressed out of his ribs, but Arthur’s hug felt just the way it should – muscular and warm and all-enveloping. He dared to close his arms around Arthur’s back. 

If Arthur could only go on holding him this way, for ever, then everything would be all right. If Arthur could still find it in him to hold Merlin at all – knowing, but still willing to touch him – then everything was going to be all right. He felt all of his fears slide out of him in a deep sigh, hollowing him out. His next breath refilled him again with warmth and hope, and love. 

“Good grief, man, you’re shivering,” Arthur said, against his ear. He stepped back, breaking the hug as quickly as he’d started it. His hands moved to Merlin’s shoulders, holding him steady. “Are you ill?” Arthur asked, gazing into his face. 

“I’m sorry. I’ve had a bit of a shock.” He sniffed again, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “It’s shock, that’s what it is. Shock.” 

“What, _more_ of a shock than a gryphon nearly falling on your head?” 

“I’m just a bit … stunned. Yes. Stunned is the word. It’s been so long … Years and years! You’re sure you’re not angry with me?”

“I am not angry with you.” Arthur gave his shoulders a little shake for emphasis and then released him. “I _forgive_ you, do you understand? You’re a sorcerer. Fine. Not that I’m actually _happy_ about it. I don’t think I’ll ever actually _like_ magic… but it’s fine. Shit happens.” 

“I thought you thought magic was evil.”

“Magic _is_ evil, Merlin. Of that I have absolutely no doubt.”

“I’m not evil!” Merlin protested, weakly, knowing that it might not be true. He wasn’t sure any more. He’d killed Agravain with less effort than sneezing. 

“I never said that you were. _You’re_ not evil, Merlin, you haven’t got the brains for it.” 

“Oh.” He felt a weight come off his soul. Arthur didn’t believe he was evil. Arthur knew that he had killed Agravaine, knew that he had lied and lied and lied … but didn’t believe he was evil anyway. If Arthur, who always immediately jumped to conclusions as far as magic was concerned, didn’t think he was evil, then he probably wasn’t. 

_“Magic_ is evil. It corrupts the soul.” 

“Oh. It does?” Clearly, Wulfric hadn’t got that far in his off-the-cuff lessons. 

Arthur raised one finger, and wagged it close to Merlin’s nose. “Magic hidden in the dark festers. Unchecked, it spreads like poison. But _you_ aren’t unchecked, are you? You serve _me._ You serve me still, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Merlin said, and for the first time, this was a statement he was absolutely certain about. Perhaps he needed Arthur more than Arthur needed him. Gaius couldn’t command him, any longer. But Arthur ruled him. “Yes, till the day I die. You know that.” 

“Good. So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll have no more secrets, Merlin. I want – I _demand_ – complete transparency from you, Merlin. If I know what you’re up to, I can keep an eye on you. So you’re going to tell me everything, from beginning to end, the way Wulfric tells Cullinan.”

And here was the point at which Arthur was going to get angry. 

“I can’t,” Merlin mumbled. 

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I mean, I can’t tell you everything.”

“Yes, you can,” Arthur insisted. “You must.”

“No, I can’t,” Merlin insisted right back at him, shaking his head adamantly. He stepped backwards. “There are things that are not for you to know.”

“Not… for _me_ … to know.” He could hear the flat tone in Arthur’s voice. There was a hardness to his jaw, visible even in the half-darkness. “Really.” 

“There are things that I can’t tell you because they’re not _meant_ for you. There are things I’ve done – things I’ve seen – that I can’t share with you.”

“Wulfric tells Cullinan everything,” Arthur pointed out.

“I’m not Wulfric. And you’re _really_ not Cullinan!”

“And that makes a difference, does it?”

“Yes! You’re the King!” 

“My point exactly!”

“But it’s my point, too! Cullinan isn’t _anyone’s_ King. Nothing _he_ does affects a whole country. But what _we_ do affects the whole of Camelot. You’re the King.” 

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. “Merlin, I am trying to reach out and offer you the olive branch, I really am, but you’re not making it any easier.” 

“Do you think it’s any easier for _me?”_ Merlin cried out. _“Do_ you? I’m sorry! I would tell you, if I could, but I can’t. Some of it would make you angry, and some of it would break your heart.” Merlin knotted his fingers together nervously. “I love you like a brother, Arthur. I’d lay my life down for yours in a heartbeat. Every ounce of my strength is yours to command. But I can’t tell you everything I know. Everything I do in Camelot is for you, but I can’t tell you how, or why, or…” 

“So, I’m supposed to just accept being treated like a mushroom? And trust that what I’m being fed is good quality dung?” 

_“Yes!”_

Arthur sighed heavily. He continued to pinch the bridge of his nose. Merlin waited. He recognised the signs of Arthur, working his way through a problem. 

“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.” He lowered his head. 

“I don’t want you to leave!” Arthur barked angrily around the heel of his hand. “Haven’t I made that clear to you? No. You’re staying, and that’s final.” 

Merlin waited some more. “You know what I am, now,” he said, eventually. “It’s your choice whether it’s acceptable or not.”

“Is it?” Arthur asked, half to himself. “Yes, it is. It _is_ my choice.” 

Then, as if he had come to a decision, and had drawn strength from it, his back straightened. His hand fell down. “Tomorrow,” he said to Merlin, firmly. 

“Tomorrow?” Merlin asked. 

“I want to think about it some more, and then we can come to a decision. We’ll talk more tomorrow. 

“Tomorrow,” Merlin agreed. 

“For now – you do not have my permission to run away. Do you hear me? That is a royal command. You stay. End of story. And Gawain is probably wondering what on earth is going on.” He extended his hand, in an invitation to Merlin to precede him back to the fire. 

“All right.” Merlin stepped past him, and to his surprise he felt Arthur’s hand come down around the back of his neck. 

“Idiot,” Arthur said, affectionately, and gave him a shake by the nape of the neck. “Always such an idiot.” Arthur’s hand slipped around his shoulder to his back and propelled him gently back toward the fire. 


	4. The reward for a job well done

Almost the first thing Sir Andrew said the next morning was, “Where is Merlin?” 

“He’s not here,” Sir Ellyan said. 

“I can see that, Ellyan! Where is he?”

“He got up before dawn and went for a walk,” Mal said. “I was on watch.”

“Is his horse still here?”

“Yes, of course.” Sir Ellyan pointed to the picket line. “He’s probably just gone looking for breakfast.” 

“Yes. He wouldn’t leave Brownie.” Sir Andrew bowed his head, and brooded for a moment, resting his lips on his ringed index finger. “And even if he _did_ run away, he would probably only go straight back to Gaius," he said, half to himself.

“Why would he run away?” Sir Ellyan asked. 

Sir Andrew shook off his introspective air. “No reason,” he shrugged off Sir Ellyan’s question. “He’ll show up in his own sweet time. Saddle up! There’s no purpose tarrying here longer than we need to.” 

Cully pulled on his boots and watched his men and Sir Andrew’s getting ready for the day. Weapons, armour, horses… they moved together in cooperation this morning. Mal helped Gawain tack up his fractious horse. Percival packed up the belongings of the wounded Dinadan.

Dinadan was awake, and sitting up. 

“How’s the arm, Din?” Cully said, going down on one knee at his side. 

“Hurts, but…” Dinadan couldn’t shrug his shoulders, so he turned his palm over in a helpless gesture. 

“We’ll see if Merlin has anything in his bag of tricks for you,” Sir Andrew promised, over Cully’s shoulder. _“When_ he shows up again…”

There was no breakfast this morning, because there was no Merlin to conjure it. Cully packed up his bedding, and tacked up his horse, then went over to have a look at the carcass of the gryphon. 

The carcass still lay in the wreckage of the house, where it had fallen last night. In the dawn light, it looked less like a magnificent monster than a dead hen awaiting dinner. Its head had been removed, by Sir Andrew’s command, and it had been dragged out of the wreck of the house, but no-one had moved it further. 

The head lay on its side in the grass, the beak gaping wide and its huge avian eye clouded over. Its narrow tongue slumped from the corner of its beak, and the base of its neck, where it had been disjointed by Sir Percival’s sword, had leaked a great pool of blood into the dirt around it. 

It had been magnificent last night. Dreadful, yes; terrifying, and he would remember the downwash of its wings as it went over his head until his dying day – but it had been magnificent none the less. Now it reminded him of a beached whale being butchered for meat and oil, bone and baleen – mighty but dismantled. He couldn’t help but feel a small pang of loss.

He looked up at the scrape of boots in the wreckage of the house. Wulf was clambering unsteadily over the tumbled stones toward him, balancing himself with his arms out. 

“Bigger than I expected,” Wulf greeted him. “Just paced it out. Must weigh a couple of tons, at least.”

“That so?” 

“That’s so.” Wulf came and stood alongside him. 

Cully half-turned, so as to cast a casual-seeming glance behind him for eavesdroppers. “Could you have taken it by yourself?” 

Wulf tightened his lips. “No. Not the way the lad did it. That was something else, what he did last night. Never seen anything like it.” 

“Strong?”

“Not just strong. He made up a new spell on the fly, just like _that,”_ Wulf snapped his fingers for emphasis. _“Bregdeanweald arewangefellanrightNOW.”_

 _“Right now?_ That doesn’t sound like any spell I’ve ever heard.” 

“Nifty, isn’t it? He pulled it together out of nothing, and it worked.”

“Isn’t that the Old Tongue and the New Tongue in one?”

Wulf nodded, scratching at his stubbled chin. “And where have you ever heard of a sorcerer who can do that? Pull two sorcerous forms into a single spell? It’s not possible! And yesterday, when I lit the pyre for George – he was able to pick up my spell and carry it on from where I left off. He was able to match my magic in a matter of …” Wulf snapped his fingers again for emphasis. 

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’ve never even _heard_ of flexibility like that. It’s not even a question of strength. It’s as if there are not limits to what he can learn. Fascinating.”

“The sooner we leave for Mercia the better,” Cully said.

“Not just yet. I want to stick around for a while, and see what this lad’s capable of.” Wulf waggled his eyebrows at him in anticipation. 

“You sure?”

“This could be a whole new discipline taking shape! History happening right in front of our eyes, Cully – we can’t just _leave_ in the middle of it. I want to _watch_. Dover’s not going anywhere.”

Cully sighed. “We _have_ to leave. It’s not as if we can go back to Camelot with them. They’ll find out that we’re not Knights of Camelot, and that’ll be the end of us.”

“Just a bit longer,” Wulf said. “Until Greensward, at least.”

Cully too wasn’t in any hurry to leave their new friends, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Just a bit longer, then. We’ll see Din gets to a physician, and then we’ll see what happens.” At least they no longer had to worry about being exposed as commoners. Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival weren’t nobles either, clearly, and Sir Andrew knew perfectly well who Cully was, even if he didn’t actually know what he was. 

There was the sound of a footstep behind him. Cully turned to see Sir Andrew approaching them, and gave his brother a quelling waggle of his eyebrows. Wulf subsided with a harrumph. 

Sir Andrew walked up alongside him, and stood staring down at the gryphon’s head. He was tugging on his gloves. 

“Bigger than I expected,” Cully said to him, gesturing at the head. 

Sir Andrew smiled in agreement. “Somehow, I don’t think throwing it into a sack and galloping to Mercia is going to work,” he said. 

“We’ll have to make ourselves a travois, and get one of the horses to draw it,” Cully said. 

“There are plenty of poles around,” Sir Andrew agreed. “I’ve sent Mal and Iorik to look for some ropes and canvas.” 

Cully looked at Wulf. “Have you made your observances yet?” 

Wulf shook his head. “I was getting a better look at it first. With your permission, Sir Andrew?” 

Sir Andrew made a ‘go ahead’ gesture, and stepped back out of Wulf’s way to watch curiously. Wulf stepped closer to the gryphon’s head, and knelt above it. He drew out his belt knife, and raised it to his face. _“Afeorme,”_ he whispered to the blade, and a line of bright blue traced the edge of the blade. 

Cully saw Sir Andrew twitch, very slightly. He rocked his weight back, as if he was about to take a step backward, and then rocked his weight forward again, as if he’d steeled his nerve not to. “Observances?” Sir Andrew asked. 

“Customary when you’ve killed a magical creature,” Cully said. He folded his arms, and waited. The rite didn’t take long. 

Wulf raised the blade in his right hand, opened his left hand, and made a nick in the heel of his palm with the cleansed blade. He had his head down, so Cully could not see his face. He muttered the words of his rite for the benefit of the dead gryphon alone, but Cully knew the words. 

“People forget that there’s more to the Old Religion than just magic. It _is_ an actual religion as well,” Cully said, watching Wulf. The drops of blood from his hand were immediately absorbed by the russet feathers of the gryphon’s head. “If you kill a magical creature, you’re supposed to apologise to the creature’s spirit. Part of keeping the balance of the world.” 

“You’re not doing it yourself…?” Sir Andrew pointed out, by way of a question. 

“I’m not a sorcerer. This is between magic and magic; nothing to do with you or me.”

Wulf stood up, slipping his knife away. “It’s an acknowledgement that inside, it and I share a bit of a bond. I killed one of my own, you see?”

“But you killed it anyway.”

“It was going to kill a bunch of you mundanes. I couldn’t stand by and let that happen. Think of it this way … if you came across another knight attacking unarmed peasants – would you greet him as an equal and join him, or would you challenge him as an equal for the peasants’ sake?” 

“I’d stop him.” Sir Andrew pursed his lips. 

“You can’t just let magic run wild. The balance of the world must be maintained.” He turned over his right hand, and then turned over his left. “Right hand path. Left hand path. Get it?” 

Sir Andrew lowered his chin, to stare at the gryphon, as if puzzling over it. “Has… Does… Um. Did you see Merlin make observances?”

 _Well, well, well,_ Cully thought. 

“I haven’t seen him,” Wulf said, carefully, flicking a glance at Cully that spoke volumes but letting nothing leak into his voice. “But he wouldn’t anyway. _All_ parts of the Old Religion are banned in Camelot; the right hand path as well as the left.”

 _“Were_ banned,” Sir Andrew corrected mildly, putting his head on one side, his gaze still on the gryphon. 

There was a call from the campsite, and a bubble of voices. Cully turned on his heel to look back. 

Merlin had reappeared, and he was talking to Sir Percival and Iorik, pointing with one hand down between the lanes of houses. 

“Merlin!” Sir Andrew barked, and strode away. “Where the hell have you been all morning? I thought you’d run off in the middle of the night!”

“You asked me not to!” Merlin protested. “I was… Er, I was exploring.”

“Exploring? I had to tack up both horses myself!” Sir Andrew said, accusingly. “And we have had no breakfast!”

Cully would have expected cheerful cheek from Merlin, but for once the ‘general idiot’ avoided making an impertinent reply. Instead he ducked his head away from Sir Andrew’s gaze, and pointed down the hill. “I found a cart?” he said, as if offering it by way of compensation. 

“A cart?” 

Merlin had indeed found a small farm cart. It was in a yard close to the foot of the Tor, under a tree, and still covered by a tightly tied-down tarpaulin. He had even found the harness, in a nearby house, carefully hung up on its hooks by its previous owners. Within a few minutes, Percival and Iorik had dragged the empty cart out of its hiding place and pulled it up to the Top, while Gawain and Merlin followed with the harness. 

“Excellent,” Sir Andrew said, standing back and surveying the cart with a satisfied air, as if he’d designed it himself. 

“Only one problem,” Sir Ellyan said. “None of our horses is trained to pull it. It takes time to teach a horse what to do in harness.”

“Leave that to me,” Wulf said. 

He led Danny up to the cart, and laid a hand on the horse’s ewe neck, under the straggly mane. He lowered his head, and pressed his brow against the horse’s wither. 

A moment later, Danny picked up his head, and turned it to stare at the cart with his ears pricked. He turned his ears back and forth, and the muscles over his jaw twitched as he ground his teeth thoughtfully. Then, as if coming to a decision, he blew out his nostrils and pulled his own reins out of Wulf’s hands. He turned his bony rump to the cart and reversed himself in between the shafts. 

“There we go,” Wulf said. He walked to Danny’s side, and began unsaddling him. 

“That’s some horse!” Sir Andrew said, impressed. He was looking at Danny as if he was reconsidering his ideas of equine conformation. 

“I told you some horses have magic,” Cully said. 

“What did you do?” Ellyan asked, suspiciously. 

“I explained to him what we need, and said none of your big fat destriers knows how to do it.” Wulf gave Sir Ellyan a wink and a click of his tongue, one dark eyebrow twitching down to meet his quick grin. “Magic! Mal, bring us the collar, lad?” 

Wulf and Mal harnessed Danny, adjusting the harness to compensate for Danny’s larger size. Sir Ellyan and Sir Percival heaved the gryphon’s head into the back of the cart, and threw the tarpaulin over it to hide its ugliness. The last horses were tacked up, the last belongings stuffed into saddle-bags. Ten men worked together as a team made quick work of breaking camp, and in a few minutes, they were ready to ride. 

_Nine men, working together,_ Cully corrected himself. Of them all, Merlin was hanging back. The servant’s head was low, and he spoke little. He kept looking away from them all as if avoiding everyone’s gaze. 

No, Cully realized. He was avoiding Sir Andrew’s gaze in particular. Merlin was taking care to keep the bustle of breaking camp between himself and Sir Andrew at all times. 

“Dinadan,” Cully asked. “Want to ride, or go in the cart?” 

Dinadan was on his feet, pale as a sheet, and holding his injured shoulder with the opposite hand. He looked to where Wulf and Mal were harnessing Danny, and narrowed his eyes in unease. “Unsprung. Hellish. I think I’ll ride.”

“I’ll drive,” Merlin said quietly to Wulf, just audibly to Cully. 

_“I’ll drive,”_ Wulf corrected him. “My horse, my ride. Ride with your Sir Andrew. I think you and he have a few things to talk about.”

Merlin looked appalled. The tendons in his skinny neck sprang tight so quickly in shock that his head jumped. Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” 

“Suit yourself, lad.” Wulf swung his saddle onto the seat of the cart, and climbed up onto the rickety seat. 

Merlin walked away, detouring carefully around where Sir Andrew ran down his horse’s stirrups. 

Merlin hadn’t been exploring this morning, Cully guessed; he had been avoiding Sir Andrew until they were almost ready to ride. That, taken with Sir Andrew’s comments earlier about Wulf’s observances… _Well, well, well,_ he thought. 

Cully rode his horse close alongside the cart, and breathed softly, “Think _someone_ came out of the closet last night.” He wasn’t sure whether to be pleased for the lad, or irritated at his behaviour. 

Wulf picked up his reins, and flashed Cully a grin that said it all. “Good things come to those who wait,” he said, cheerfully. 

Sir Andrew put his foot in his stirrup, swung up into his saddle, and used both hands to flick his red cloak out so that it lay straight. “We ride for Greensward.” 

………………………………..

Dinadan could ride no faster than a gentle dawdle, and they stopped from time to time to help him off his horse and rest. It took them until almost nightfall to reach Greensward. 

Cully rode closer to the side of the cart as they breasted the same hill, and looked down along the same road onto the village. It looked completely unchanged from the last time he had ridden on this road, as if no time had passed in this little agricultural coccoon. It probably _was_ completely unchanged. He, on the other hand… 

“Seems like longer ago than it actually was.” Cully said, to Wulf. 

“In more ways than one,” Wulf agreed, from the seat of the cart. “It’s all downhill from here.”

He glanced at Wulf, and flashed him a grin. “It’s called a _slope,_ brother.” 

“I meant, from here to retirement.”

“You wanted to retire,” Cully pointed out. 

“Yes, but _you_ don’t. And I don’t know if I’m ready to just _stop_ yet.” 

“It’s a long way to Dover,” Cully said, shrugging his shoulders. “We’ve got to get to Mercia before we can make any plans. No sense counting those chickens.” 

The villagers saw them coming much sooner, and were assembled long before they reached the centre of the village. They rode down the same dirt road, and the same children screamed, and the same chimneys leached smoke into the sky. 

This wasn’t the first village he had ridden into as a victorious champion, Cully thought, but was the first for a long, long time, and it might well be his last. Wulf was right. They had reached the end of roaming. The days of the free mercenary companies were coming to an end in Albion. 

He would have to find a new path. Somehow, somewhere … but for now he would enjoy this one last victory. He had earned it. 

“Five gets you ten it starts raining as soon as we all get indoors,” Wulf called to him. 

“Hell, no. I know better than to gamble against _you,_ brother!”

He kneed his horse, and the horse sprang into a trot, striding out with a bouncy gait. He was aware of hoofbeats alongside him, and turned his head to see Sir Andrew trotting alongside him. 

Sir Andrew grinned. “I won’t have you stealing my thunder, Sir Cullinan!” Sir Andrew called. 

Cully grinned back at him. “I’ll race you, then, Sir Andrew!” 

They trotted into the centre of the village, neck and neck, heads high. Cully was aware of the way his red cloak billowed out behind him, just as it billowed out behind Sir Andrew, and of the way the golden dragon gleamed on his shoulder. They were victorious, and this moment was his.

They drew rein at the same tavern, in the midst of a crowd of villagers. His horse pranced under him, and with a thunder of hooves and heave of equine breath, the other riders were all behind him, filling the small space with steel and red cloaks and stamping horseflesh. The old tavern-keeper, Henrik, was a single familiar spot in a heaving sea of faces. 

“Good people of Greensward!” Sir Andrew’s voice boomed out from next to Cully. Hengroen pranced in front of Cully’s horse, and then, as if trained to do so, set all four hooves on the ground and stood stolidly with his neck arched. 

_“The King,”_ someone in the crowd of villagers whispered, in an awed voice. Silence fell. 

Henrik was sinking to the ground as if he’d noticed a button in the mud. He was kneeling. So were the two people behind them, and the circle of people behind them. They were all kneeling, all around them, sinking like a wave of wheat falling before a wind. 

Cully’s mind was reeling. _They think I’m the King?_ He looked wildly, left and right. The whole village was kneeling. His eye caught a child, still standing and momentarily taller than her elders, and the sudden movement of her mother tugging her down by her hand to kneel. 

The King. _The King._ He turned his head. Sir Andrew was still sitting in his saddle, and his grin flashed like gold at the look on Cully’s face. _… Sir Andrew?_ …

“You… you’re the K… The K… You?” The world reduced to grey and yellow sparkles, shrinking until the only thing he could see was Sir Andrew’s face. His expression suddenly turned very worried, and that worried face all alone in the centre of a curtain of grey and yellow snow. Cully bent over, and pressed his forehead down against the hard crest of his horse’s neck. The grey and yellow fuzz circled threateningly, but he could still feel his hands and his legs, and he did not fall off. 

He could hear Sir Andrew’s voice from somewhere above the clouds, dispensing orders in a ringing voice amidst a rising hubbub of voices. 

“Cully, _please,_ dismount before you faint! Please rise, my people. Up! It’s far too muddy to kneel here! Merlin, come here. Henrik, my dear fellow, glad to see you in such good health, how’s the Missus? Will you help Sir Dinadan dismount? Faith, _there_ you are, help him inside… His shoulder is quite bad. Yes, yes. Not to worry, it’s dead. There’s its head, if you want to have a look. _Merlin,_ come here. Cully – _off_ – now. Percival, take my horse. Where’s the blacksmith? Malcolm, show them the beast’s head. _Mer-_ lin!”

Sir Andrew’s voice faded out into a roar of other voices as knights and villagers around him moved to celebrate, obey, discuss, jump up and down, and just shout randomly at each other. 

Cully’s horse began to jiggle nervously. He rolled his head to one side, and opened his eyes to find Merlin staring closely at him from level with his horse’s mane, almost eye-to-eye with him. As he met Merlin’s eyes, the young man’s face rumpled up into an impish, dimpled grin. “Wake up, Sir Cully, we don’t want you falling off now,” he said, cheerfully. “Arthur’s going to want to talk to you. And it’s going to rain in a bit.” 

“Arthur?” Cully asked. 

“That’s _King_ Arthur to you!” The grin didn’t fade.

Cully pushed himself upright in the saddle. He looked around and behind him, at his men. They still sat on their horses, and they looked as aghast as he did. “That’s the King?” Iorik asked, under his breath. “The actual King?” 

“Yup.” Merlin said, nodding and bobbing up and down. “The genuine article; provenance and patents of nobility available on request.” He bobbed up and down, and grinned at Cully. “Nice, isn’t he?”

All Cully’s conversations of the last two days were swirling around in his head. _“Who the blithering hell are you?”_ he croaked, under his breath. “Oh Gods.”

“Mer- _Lin!”_ bellowed an irritated voice from inside the tavern. 

“I’d better go,” Merlin said. “Come inside before you all get wet.” He clapped Cully’s horse’s neck, and disappeared through the open door. 

“Well, well, well,” Wulf said from where he still perched on the cart’s seat. “Wonders will never cease.” He alone didn’t seem horrified, only bemused. 

“Did you _know?”_ Cully croaked. 

“No,” Wulf said. “I’ve just put two and two together and got an Emrys.” He smiled, slowly. 

“What’s an Emrys?” Cully asked. 

Wulf smiled wider, and his eyelids lowered in a slow blink; a smug expression of deliberate mysteriousness. “Tell you later.”

Cully dismounted into a ring of villagers. 

“I knew you’d do it, Sir Cullinan,” old Henrik cheered into Cully’s face, daring to clap the ‘knight’ on the shoulder like a good dog. “Knew you’d do it!” Other faces smiled around him, other hands were patting his shoulders, his back. He allowed his horse’s reins to be taken from him. Other hands were running up his stirrups for him, as if eager to help their hero. 

“Right,” he muttered, managing to fob Henrik off with a return pat. “Right. Of course, very good. You’re welcome, thank you, you’re all welcome. Thank you, let me through please, thank you.” He pushed his way through the delighted mob into the tavern.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Ten minutes Cully found time to breathe and think. 

He had had a glass of mead rather too quickly, and had been clapped on the back by altogether too many peasants, but he had escaped. The rain had come down just a few seconds after he walked indoors, and it was hammering down as heavy as a green sea, as if making up for lost time. The racket made a deep muffled roar through the building, as if the whole of Greensward was vibrating with the violence of falling water. 

Now Cully was sitting on one of the narrow beds in one of the tavern’s little guest rooms. Wulf stood lounging with artificial casualness by the closed door, one foot propped up flat-soled against the timber wall, but his fingers were worrying at a loose seam on his scabbard. 

On the other bed, Dinadan was sitting barechested, having had his bandages cut off with kitchen scissors. Merlin and the village healer were bent over his bare shoulder, discussing the purple, swollen joint in cool tones that were not, in Cully’s view, entirely congruent with the tightly squeezed expression on Dinadan’s face. 

Sir Andrew – _King Arthur, dear God. That is the King_ – was holding court in the common room. He could hear his voice ringing through the walls. The _real_ King, speaking to his people in the same tone of voice Cully had faked just a few days ago. 

“Well, that’s that, then.” Merlin straightened his back. 

“What’s the prognosis?” Cully straightened his back and pushed himself to his feet. 

Merlin and the healer exchanged glances, and the healer dropped her gaze, dropping her swab into the bowl of warm water she had used to clean Dinadan’s shoulder. 

“My shoulder’s fucked,” Dinadan said through white lips. His fingers explored his freshly-strapped shoulder gingerly. 

“The joint of his shoulder is wrecked,” Merlin said, sombrely. He reached down and touched Dinadan’s other shoulder. “It’s beyond either of our abilities to heal. I’m sorry.” 

“Not your fault, mate.” 

“We’ll have to to get you Gaius in Camelot, before the injury has time to set. If anyone can heal your shoulder, he can. Otherwise… you might never be able to carry a sword in battle again. The joint won’t take the weight.” 

Dinadan nodded. “You said as much last night.” 

“There’s no better physician in all of Albion than Gaius,” the healer said. “If anyone can help you, he can.” 

_“If_ he can help me,” Dinadan said. His eyes squeezed shut again. “I might as well admit it. My shoulder’s ruined, and I’m fucked.” 

“I’ll come by later with a potion for the swelling,” the healer said. She picked up the bowl and the discarded bandages, gave Merlin a solemn nod, and left the room. Wulf opened and closed the door for her. 

Suddenly, the ringing voice through the wall stopped. Cully straightened his back. “Now what?”

Merlin turned, on hearing his voice. “Now he’ll want to see you, I think. Don’t worry. He’s still Sir Andrew, he’s just _not_ Sir Andrew.” 

Cully looked at Wulf, and Wulf looked back. “This was my play, I’ll finish it,” Cully said. 

“Your play is my play, brother.” 

A moment later there was a knock on the door, and someone opened it. Sir Andrew … King Arthur … _The King_ strolled in, with Malcolm and Iorik behind him. Sir Percival and Sir Ellyan walked in last, and shut the door behind them. Percival took up a position by the door, folded his massive arms across his chest, and leaned back against the wall with a sigh which spoke as loudly as words that he was here as a witness only. 

Cully braced his feet, and clenched his fists. 

“Sir Cullinan, Sir Wulfric,” Arthur said. He nodded to them and came to a stop in the centre of the room, but his next words were addressed to Merlin. “How is Dinadan’s shoulder?”

Merlin shook his head, his lips pursed. 

“Fucked,” Dinadan spoke up for himself. “It’s fucked.”

“I’ll take you with me to Camelot. We’ll see what my Court Physician has to say."

“If this Gaius can restore the use of my arm,” Dinadan said, “I would ride to Cairo, let alone Camelot. A one-armed archer isn’t much use.” 

“But even if you never string a bow again, you are welcome to stay in Camelot as long as you wish. Camelot has a _very_ long-unfilled vacancy for a Court Minstrel. My father wasn’t one for much entertainment, but I hope my own reign is a bit less … shall we say, solemn? You’re welcome at court, as a minstrel as well as a knight.” 

“Thank you,” Dinadan said. 

_My_ reign. _My_ Court Physician… “You’re the King,” Cully said. 

“Yes.” Sir Andrew’s teeth bared in that huge grin. “Guilty as charged.” He gave a little bow. 

“You knew all along we weren’t knights!” Cully accused him. 

“I did. I _do_ have to meet all the knights of Camelot in person at least once. It _is_ something of a prerequisite.” Arthur shrugged his shoulders, and moved past Cully to sit down on the end of the bed. He propped his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He grinned up at Cully. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said, cheerily, and not as if he was sorry in the least. “But it was just too good to resist! You’ve such a big mouth, I couldn’t resist just letting you go on, and seeing where we ended up. But I had you, Sir Cully, I had you.” 

“But – why?” Cully asked, aggrieved. 

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know why. There’s just something about you that I like.” He glanced up over his shoulder to grin at Merlin. “And can’t a King simply like someone, as much as anyone else? I wanted to see how far you’d go; what sort of stuffing you had in you. And I’ve found out, to my satisfaction.”

“Should I call you Your Majesty?” Cully wondered. 

“’Your Majesty’ is too obsequious. I prefer Sire. Obviously _Sir Andrew_ of Dollop Head is out of the question.”

His face was all cheerfulness and bright eyes, but Cully did not have the heart to grin back. “And now what? Sire? What are you going to do?”

The King was now the only one sitting down in the room, except for Dinadan, still bandaged and barechested on the other bed. Arthur had managed, somehow, to turn the end of a bed into a throne, and a small village bedroom into a court. Cully folded his arms across his chest, and then unfolded them, realizing that he looked as defensive as he felt. 

“Well.” The King examined him closely. He rubbed his chin, the grin only half-gone. “All I demand from you is that you take the gryphon’s head to Mercia. And _then,_ if you would, please tell me what his reaction is when he sees it. I’m _dying_ to know. Other than that …” he shrugged his shoulders, “what happens next is up to you.” 

“We’re free to go?” Cully asked, and frowned. “No consequences from pretending to be a knight? Technically we’ve broken the law – _your_ law.” 

Arthur spread his hands. “Who says you were pretending to be anything? You said it yourself, you know. The King need nobody’s permission to make a handful of new knights. If _I_ say you’re acceptable, if _I_ say you are fit to be knights of Camelot, then you _are_ knights of Camelot. It’s up to you to make it real.”

“Real?”

“Real Knights of Camelot. Your brother wants to settle down, someone said? So settle down _here,_ in Camelot.” He gestured around himself, at the little room, in lieu of the kingdom as a whole. “It’s yours, if you want it.”

Cully wobbled on his feet. “Me, a _knight?_ But I’m a _mercenary-!”_

“You _were_ a mercenary,” Arthur said. “Now you can be a knight.”

“You don’t know what I did. What all of us did.”

“I know more than you think I do. I know that you fought with Helios against me, and that you survived Ealdor.” 

“You know!” 

Arthur spread his hands to his sides, gesturing the knowledge into inconsequence. “You’ve earned your place. Lancelot spoke for you, before I even met you. And you’ve demonstrated your dedication to your duty… how easy would it have been for you to simply ride away and abandon your men? And I’ve seen your courage for myself. I’ve seen your leadership. And I know a professional soldier when I see one. In other words … you’ll be a knight, in truth, if you decide you want to be one.” 

“It can’t be that simple,” Cully said. 

“Got news for you, pal,” Percival murmured. 

“It’s that simple. The choice is yours.” Arthur gestured at the door. “If you choose no, the road is open. Go to Mercia, and keep going.”

“And if I choose yes?”

“It’s easy. You kneel and swear fealty, I knight you, and then you serve Camelot and wear the red cloak for the rest of your days.”

Cully glanced down at his cloak, at the stolen dragon he wore on his shoulder. 

“It’s not an easy future I’m offering – it might just lead you to your doom anyway,” Arthur warned. “But it is yours, if you want it, and if you’re willing to serve… _Sir_ Cullinan.” 

Cully was aware of his breath coming in through his nose in short breaths, as if he had been climbing stairs. “And my boys?” he asked. 

“You promised to steer them safely through the mess you landed them in. Well, you’ve discharged that promise. They’re safe, Sir Cullinan. Let _me_ take them, it’s what I’m here for. The same choice is theirs as well.”

Cully blinked his eyes. He was beginning to sweat. He was aware that his life rested on this moment; that this room, this hour, was a hinge in his life as definitive as any battle. _Choose…_

Arthur was looking at him, closely, but not challenging him. 

He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath. 

The memories stirred in his mind: this man in battle. This man, with a map spread over his knee, tapping out the route the gryphon had taken with one finger. This man’s laugh, when Cully had insisted that King Arthur had chosen to send out two parties of knights and it was no-one’s business but his… His own realization that this man might be the one noble whom he, Cully, would enjoy fighting alongside. 

Serve some arrogant ponce of a king for the rest of his days? _Never …_ but serving Sir Andrew of Dollop Head? That was a different matter. It would be a _pleasure_ to ride with this man for the rest of his life. 

He opened his eyes, and glanced at Wulf. They had never made opposing decisions in all their lives. Whatever one chose, the other would choose too. Wulf nodded his head, just once. 

Cully narrowed his eyes, very slightly, asking _Are you sure?_ with his gaze. 

Wulf raised his brows, and gave another nod; a sharper one this time, and a brief widening of his eyes. Confirmation, and eagerness. 

“All right. I choose.” Cully said. “I choose.” 

“Very well.” Arthur stood up. “Give your sword to Merlin, come here, and kneel.”

“What, right now?” Cully was astonished. “I thought there was all sorts of fasting and bathing and praying and whatnot?”

Arthur paused. “Would you rather go to Mercia and think about it on the road?”

“No! I’ve decided. I’m just surprised.”

“Well, then.” Arthur spread out his hands, ready for him. 

Merlin came up to his side. Cully unbuckled the Sea Bitch slowly, and handed her to him, scabbard and all. Merlin took them without a word. He laid the Sea Bitch gently on the bed and stepped back. 

“Kneel, Cullinan of Dover.” 

He’d never knelt down in front of another man before, had he? He’d certainly never knelt down so _close_ to another man before. He could smell Arthur; the smell of sweat and horse and armour polish. Arthur’s boots were scratched, the soles clumped with mud, and his trousers had been stitched with reinforcements all along the inside of his thighs. A few of the rings of his mail over his ribs had been hammered out of shape by some violent blow. 

_That_ had been a blow intended to kill – even through mail and padded gambeson, that blow would have broken a couple of ribs, at least. This was no soft, coddled aristocrat. He _was_ making the right decision. 

He set his palms together, and raised them out toward Arthur, and Arthur’s hands closed around his. Arthur’s hands were hard and warm, and he could feel callouses. Not soft aristocratic hands; but the hands of a man who swung a sword and rode a horse, and had carried a lance against a monster just last night. 

“I want to start on a clean slate,” Cully said. 

“Technically,” Arthur said. “A knighting ceremony is supposed to start with confession, and a night’s fast, and a ritual bath. One out of three is enough. Go on.” 

Cully swallowed heavily, clearing a lump that had formed in his throat. Above him, Arthur waited quietly. Cully could hear the rain roaring against the roof, but no other sound. It was as if only he and Arthur were here. 

“Three months ago,” Cully said, at last, to the warm hands around his, “I was in Devon, when I heard that Helios was looking for independent commanders. Big job with big rewards, he said; he needed a small army. Well, I’ve taken work like that before, so we came up here. It took weeks to gather enough men and in that time … Lady Morgana arrived.”

“My half-sister,” Arthur said. He didn’t sound surprised. 

“Wulf said as soon as she arrived that there was something warped about her.” Cully wanted to appeal to Wulf to speak for himself, but he did not. This was Cully’s confessional, not Wulf’s, nor any of them. The screw-up was his, the guilt for his men’s deaths was his. Retribution and penitence would be his. He kept his eyes focused on the buckle of Arthur’s sword-belt. 

“Wulf said, that one’s magic tastes twisted, like something festering. Poisoned at the source. There are some sorcerers – not many – who are as much a threat to other sorcerers as they are to you. Wulf feared for his life. But by then it was far too late to withdraw from my agreement with Helios. We knew too much of the overall plan. They would never had risked letting us away for fear that we would run straight to you.” 

“So, you attacked Camelot.” 

“We went in through the tunnel that runs under the royal stable. The assault went off without a hitch. But Wulf spent the whole time we were there with his knickers in a twist, afraid that Lady Morgana would notice him. As soon as Lord Agravaine called for men to go to Ealdor, I volunteered my whole company, so that we could get as far away from Camelot as possible.”

“And led most of your men to their doom.” 

“Yes.” That was a bitter pill to swallow. “The dragon came out of nowhere. Flaming. It caught us exposed on the hillside – we weren’t expecting an assault from the sky. Within minutes most of the expedition was dead and the rest were broken up. My boys – almost all of my boys…” Cully shook his head. “It was a rout; a catastrophe. _Run,_ Lord Agravaine said, so we ran. And then, just as we were about to run into the caves where the dragon couldn’t get to us – Wulf stopped us. _Stop, stop, stop, there’s something worse in there.”_

“Worse than a dragon?” 

“I know Wulf’s instincts. If he says something is a bad mistake, I believe him. We saw the dragon finish off most of the expedition, deliberately hunting them down, but Wulf hid us. I don’t know what happened to Lord Agravaine, but we ran, and we hid.”

“Where did you get the horses and the red cloaks?”

“We picked up this one at a small farm. The rest came from a patrol we overran on the road. For which I am truly, truly sorry. We couldn’t go back to Camelot, anyhow. It didn’t matter which one of you held the throne, you would _both_ want us dead. We needed enough money to get out of Albion altogether, and all my gold is in Camelot … So we came up with a plan to use the red cloaks to steal some. From you.”

“And then you heard about the gryphon…” 

“And then… we heard about the gryphon.” Cully shook his head. “It seemed like such a simple plan!

“And then _I_ turned up, in person, and blew all your plans out of the water.” 

“I’m not a knight,” Cully said. “I’m just a mercenary. I fight other people’s battles, and then when the battle is done, they give me money and send me on my way.” 

The King bent down, lowering himself to Cully’s ear where he knelt. He felt the King’s breath on his ear, before the familiar voice whispered softly, “Fighting other people’s battles is what the Knights of Camelot _do.”_

He straightened up, and Cully looked up to find him grinning. 

“There’s more to knighthood than that, surely.”

“Yes. There’s an oath. You understand that there’s no going back from this oath? You can’t change your mind about it later – an oath of fealty is _for ever.”_

“One way or another, this is the end of the road for us.” Cully nodded. “I’ll do it.” 

Arthur drew a deep breath, and his eyes went a little distant. “Cullinan of Dover, you have been deemed fit for this estate by your peers - by which I mean Gawain, Ellyan and Percival - and you have indicated your willingness to accept this honour by Our Hands. Do you swear allegiance to Camelot, now, and for as long as you shall live? Just say I do, you don’t need to say anything flowery.”

“I do.”

“Do you solemnly swear by all that you hold holy that henceforth you will uphold the statutes, customs and laws of Camelot, and that you will obey and honour the Crown?”

“I do.” 

“Do you swear to draw your sword only with just cause, to defend to your utmost strength the Kingdom and all those weaker than yourself, and to conduct yourself in all matters with the honour as befits a knight of your station?”

“I do.” 

“Do you swear to take into your heart and exemplify in all your words and deeds the ideals of the Knights of Camelot, to the greater glory of your own honour, the honour of your peers, and the Crown in whose name you ride?” 

_This_ man’s Crown… “I do.” 

“We accept your pledge. From this day forth and for as long as We hold the Crown, you are Our liegeman.” Arthur’s hand lifted from his side. “The sword.” 

Cully heard the Sea Bitch being drawn from her scabbard, a steel hiss somewhere over his head. “Then having sworn these solemn oaths know now that We, Arthur, son of Uther, by the sacred laws vested in Us, dub you _Sir_ Cullinan of Dover.” 

The Sea Bitch was razor sharp, and heavy, and she had served him well ever since Wulf fished her out from the Goodwin Sands. He was aware of her passing down the side of his face, to tap gently on his shoulder, and then lifting in a smooth arc over his head to his other shoulder, and then once more back to the first shoulder. 

He was a knight. 

“Arise, Sir Cullinan.” 

Cully climbed to his feet. He stood, feeling a little stunned, as the King put his sword belt around his waist and buckled it, and then ran the Sea Bitch back into her own scabbard. 

Then Arthur put his arms around Cully’s shoulders, and drew him in for a quick embrace. He drew back to arms’ length, still holding Cully’s shoulders, and smiled at him. “Congratulations.”

“I’m a knight!” Cully said. 

Sir Percival stepped over to him, flung arms like masts around him, and yanked him forward in a crushing hug. “Welcome!” he said, in Cully’s ear. 

“Thank you!” Cully croaked. 

“Now you,” Arthur said, to Wulfric. “Wulfric of Dover, you have been deemed fit for this estate by your peers…”

Cully watched as Wulfric knelt, and swore an oath of fealty, and was knighted. He noticed that Arthur changed the wording of his oath slightly. 

“Do you swear to draw your sword _or whatever weapons fate has given you…”_

“I do,” Wulf said, his eyes turned up to Arthur’s face. 

“Then having sworn these solemn oaths know now that We, Arthur, son of Uther, son of Constantine II, by the sacred laws vested in Us, dub you _Sir_ Wulfric of Dover.”

Iorik watched with one eyebrow raised. “What about remuneration?” he asked, and then added “Sire,” for form’s sake. Cully recognised the signs of the life-long pauper, making sure he wasn’t risking too much for too little. 

“Remuneration?” Arthur asked. 

“Aye, pay. Pounds, shillings, dinars, whatever.”

“Oh. Land,” Arthur said. “Acres, hectares, square miles, whatever.”

“Land!” Iorik said, amazed. “To live on?”

“Not just to live on, but an estate to hold in my name. Farms, peasants, maybe a manor house in the middle. You’d have to raise your own men-at-arms, and there’s a stipend, of course, for expenses on active duty–.”

“I’ll do it,” Iorik said. He knelt.

Mal, when it was his turn, knelt with the words, “I think you’re _much_ more interesting than Prester John.” 

Arthur’s eyebrows twitched in curiosity at this comment, but he simply started with the declaration. “Malcolm of the Hilltop Bare, you have been deemed fit for this estate by your peers…”

Arthur turned to Dinadan, last of them all, where he sat on the bed. “Now you?”

“I don’t think I can.” Dinadan’s face was glum. “Not with one arm.”

“Nonsense,” Arthur said. “If you can carry a sword again, you will?”

Dinadan nodded. 

“And does swearing an oath bother you?”

“No.”

“Then kneel, Dinadan. You have been deemed fit for this estate by your peers…” 

It was done. 

“Sir Iorik!” Iorik marvelled. “And me just a vagrant’s brat from York! Who would have seen _that_ coming?” 

“Me,” Arthur said, cheerily, and clapped Iorik on the arm. He turned on his heel, and looked over at Cully. 

“How does that feel?” Arthur asked Cully.

 _Like retirement, like settling down, like getting married, like coming home…_ “Good,” Cully said. “Feels good.”

“It’s going to take a while to sink in,” Arthur warned them all. “It took Gawain nearly a year to get his head around it. But you’ll manage. You are a real knight, no pretense, no half measures – and whatever else happens, don’t let anyone, _ever,_ tell you otherwise. That’s the first lesson.”

“I’ll remember that, Sire.” 

“And your first order, Sir Cully, is to take that cart and the gryphon’s head to Mercia, and present it to Bayard with my compliments. Tell him, from me, that he’s welcome to send me any winged nuisances he can’t manage. Camelot is more than willing to help out a neighbour in need.” 

“I’ll tell him.” 

“Good man. There’s a tab in my name in this tavern. It’s customary to have a bit of a party after a knighting ceremony.” The King turned to Mal and said to him, “Sir Malcolm. Go find Sir Gawain, and tell them, from me, ‘signed, sealed and delivered.’ Those exact words. He’ll know what you mean.” 

“Yes, Sire.” 

“Merlin. Attend on me in the next room, please.” 

He moved to the door, opened it, and was gone. Merlin, on his heels, turned in the doorway, shone them all his big, dimpled grin. “Told you he was nice,” he said, and dropped them a wink, before following his master out. 

“I’m a Knight of Camelot!” Cully said. He still couldn’t quite put his head around it. 

“So am I!” Wulf protested. 

“Yes, but I beat you to it! I’m still first!” 

Wulf met his eye, and they both broke down laughing. 

……………………………………………

“Close the door, Merlin,” Arthur said. 

Merlin turned and closed the door. He turned around, and stood watching Arthur. 

Arthur had stalked into the centre of the room, and stood between the two beds surveying the new place in which he found himself, as if he owned this room just a surely as he had the identical room next door. Merlin would have thought him unbearably arrogant, if he hadn’t seen Arthur swagger with _exactly_ the same manner in several years’ worth of caves, lairs, enemy castles, and even dungeons. Swagger was his default posture.

“So there we have it. Five new knights. It’s easy when you know how.” Arthur rubbed his hands together with a satisfied air, and turned around to bless Merlin with a beaming smile. “I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to poach a handful of knights who should have been serving Morgana.” 

“Don’t gloat,” Merlin said. 

“I’m not _gloating,_ Merlin! I’m _congratulating_ myself on a job well done! There’s a difference.” 

“How did you know they would say yes?” he asked. 

“I didn’t. I just hoped they would.” 

“And now?”

“And now, here we are. Just the two of us,” Arthur gestured with his fingers to the room around them, and raised his eyebrows. “And we have a bit of unfinished business, don’t we, Merlin?”

Merlin’s high spirits died suddenly. Last night had weighed on his mind all day, but in the excitement of the last few minutes, he’d actually managed to forget. _Arthur knew._

“Oh. Yes.”

“I noticed you avoiding me all day, but that’s all right. It’s given me time to think.”

“Glad to help,” Merlin said. 

Arthur sat down on the bed, as if occupying his throne. He patted the bed next to him. “Sit.” 

“Er…”

“Sit, Merlin. Sit!”

If he did not sit, Arthur would grab him by the shoulders and push him down. He’d done it before. Merlin turned around, and sat down next to Arthur. Arthur put his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist, and stared at the floor. 

They were almost thigh-to-thigh on the bed, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, almost touching, but not quite. Merlin put his hands between his knees, and pressed his palms together. If he closed his mind to the fact that _Arthur knew,_ he could almost pretend that they were simply sitting together, old friends, as they had sat for so many hours before. Almost, but not quite. 

“Who taught you?” Arthur asked, without turning to look at him. His voice was level, as if they were talking about some mundane skill. Sewing, or cooking. 

“Nobody,” Merlin said. 

“Somebody must have. Wulf says the Cathar taught him. Morgause taught Morgana. Who taught you?”

“I’m not like them. Nobody taught me. I was born with it. My mother told me I didn’t learn to talk until I was four, because it was easier for me just to grab what I wanted with magic. I didn’t even know any spells, when I got to Camelot.” 

"You had magic when I first met you!" Arthur accused. 

“Yes. Right from the start.” Merlin shrugged his shoulders, and then explained, realizing that Arthur couldn’t see the shrug. “Ealdor was getting too small for me. I didn’t fit in anymore, and my mother was afraid for me.” 

“So she sent you to Gaius.” 

“Yes.”

“How many other people know?” Arthur asked.

Merlin looked down at his hands, and counted in his head. “Gaius.”

“Obviously.”

“My mother.”

“Clearly. And your friend Will.” 

“He knew, and so did Lancelot.”

“Lancelot knew? And I did not?” 

“I didn’t tell him,” Merlin said, hurriedly. “He saw … well, the same thing _you_ saw last night, the night we fought the first gryphon. He promised not to tell anyone. A few people outside Camelot know. The Druids know. Other than that… nobody. People don’t see what they aren’t expecting to see.” 

“ Guinevere knows, because I told her myself. And I think you’ll find Sir Leon knows.”

“Sir Leon knows?” Merlin said, surprised.

“He got very cagy when I asked him about it. He said he owes you a debt of honour. I don’t know what, exactly, but I don’t think you have anything to fear from him.” 

“Morgana doesn’t know. Sometimes I think, if she had known, if I’d told her from the start, then things might not have turned out the way they did.”

“Nonsense. Don’t blame yourself.” Arthur reached out with one finger, and tapped Merlin’s knee in reproachment. “Morgana was … wrong in the spirit to start with. She’s more my father’s heir than I’ll ever be. I knew that when I met her, two weeks ago, and looked in her eyes. He made her what she is.”

Merlin looked at Arthur’s hand, where it had gone back to resting comfortably on his thigh. He could still feel that familiar touch on his knee, the echo of it. Arthur had always been free with touching, comfortable with physical affection. Merlin had grown used to a life of pats, claps, punches, and squeezes… Perhaps last night’s embrace had not been just a once-off gesture of pity. If Arthur could still bear to touch him, then maybe everything could be all right. He felt some of his dread dissipate. 

“For the first time,” Arthur said, “I know what kind of king I want to be. I know what kind of Camelot I would want to live in, and I know what I want to do with my reign. And, more to the point, I know who I need, who I want, doing it with me. Cully is part of what I want to do. You’re another part.”

“Have you decided…?” 

Arthur nodded. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve had all day to think about it. And I realized, _this_ much I know. _I_ am the King. You serve _me._ You’re a sorcerer, but at least you’re _my_ sorcerer. I don’t need to answer for my decisions to anyone but my own conscience.” Arthur let his hand drop, and put both of his fists on his hips. “All right,” he said, as if embarking on a new project. He pushed himself to his feet. 

It wasn’t done to sit, while the King stood. Merlin stood up, and turned to face him. “Sire?” he asked. 

“If your strength is mine to command…” Arthur began.

“It is,” Merlin said, nodding sharply. 

“Then let’s see it.”

“See it?” 

“Yes. Now. Do something.” 

Merlin looked around the room. “What do you want me to do?”

“Anything. How about – fire? Let’s see some fire, Merlin.” 

Merlin raised his hand obediently, and then stopped. 

He knew what Arthur was doing. He’d seen Arthur doing exactly this with each year’s crop of new recruits. He’d seen him do it with Cullinan’s men. He’d done exactly the same thing with Merlin himself, last night in the dark house. _Start with a little order that is easy to obey, work your way up to the bigger ones._

He would be taking a big step, right now. This was the cusp, the point where everything changed, the first time he performed magic at his King’s command. He was balanced on a knife-edge, right now, with the rest of his life on the other side. He would be Arthur’s sorcerer, from this moment on. 

Well, that was all right. He’d been waiting to take this step his whole life. 

“Go on! What are you waiting for?” Arthur made a shooing gesture. 

He was happy to obey Arthur, in the big things as well as the little ones. “Your wish is my command, Sire.” Merlin raised one hand, palm up, and whispered into it. _“Feorbearne…”_

He leaned a little bit of strength into his command, more than the spell demanded, so that the magic lit up his eyes. Arthur would see it, clearly and unmistakeably. The flame popped obediently into life in his palm, licking gently at his hand. 

Arthur jerked backwards on his heels. “Merlin! I wanted you to make a fire in the _grate!_ Not set yourself alight!” 

“I can do that too, if you want,” Merlin said. He held out his hand toward Arthur. “I can do anything you ask me to do.” 

“Anything?” 

“I think so. I’ve never come across a spell I couldn’t manage at all. I don’t know what my limits are yet.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant. You’ll do _anything_ I ask you to do?”

“Oh. Yes.” He tried to imagine a circumstance where he would refuse to perform a spell Arthur asked from him, but he couldn’t think of anything that Arthur could possible want that he wouldn’t do. “Yes. Anything.” 

“Hmm.” That should have pleased Arthur, but instead it caused a small line to appear between his brows. Arthur sucked in a breath, and turned his head sideways as he examined the flame on Merlin’s palm. He took a small step closer. 

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not at all. The fire is using my strength as fuel, so it doesn’t have to be very hot. This is just warm.” He looked down at his hand, and increased the strength in the spell. The flames escape his palm to curl around his hand and wrist. 

Arthur examined his hand, taking his time about it. Merlin waited. 

“How about both hands, Merlin?” Arthur prompted, after a minute, as if testing something. “Can you do that with both hands? Like this?” He brought his hands together, palms up.

“Two hands it is, Sire. Just as easy.” He brought his other hand up to join his right and cupped them, so that the lapping flames formed a pool in his palms. 

He extended his hands, closer to Arthur. “You can touch it, if you like,” he offered. “You’ll find it tickles a little bit.”

“It’s not hot?” Arthur asked, as if unsure.

“I would never hurt you.” He watched, closely, hardly daring to breathe, as Arthur reached out with both hands. 

But instead of touching the flame in his cupped palms, Arthur cupped his own hands below and around Merlin’s. The flames played around Merlin’s hands, then escaped around Arthur’s fingers, and played around Arthur’s hands and wrists as well. 

And then, as if he had been planning it all along, Arthur closed his hands, trapping and holding Merlin’s hands between his. 

“Now I’ve got you,” Arthur said, with satisfaction in his voice. 

Merlin found himself looking down at his own hands, palms pressed to each other, held snugly between Arthur’s muscular hands. He let the flames die. 

The breath seemed to stop in Merlin’s lungs. He’d seen this pose, so many times. Every new knight swore an oath of fealty to the King, with his palms between the King’s hands, just like this. He’d seen Cullinan do this exact thing, less than five minutes ago. 

“Knights do this,” Merlin whispered. The shiver that ran down his back made all the hairs on his back stand upright. 

“Liege-men and women of all ranks do this.”

He tipped back his head to search Arthur’s face. “Are you serious?”

“I’m dead serious, Merlin,” Arthur said. “Magic is evil. That I know.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is, Merlin. Hear me out. Magic is evil. But swords are evil too. Swords exist for nothing other than killing people, but I allow my knights to carry swords in my kingdom. And do you know why I allow my knights to carry swords in my kingdom?”

“Because that’s what knights do?”

“No. Because they swear oaths of fealty to _me._ I trust them to carry their swords, because I trust the oaths they swore that they will carry them only to serve me, and to fight for Camelot.”

“You want me to swear an oath?” Merlin asked, surprised. 

Arthur nodded. “Swear an oath of service and fealty, to me, right here, right now – and I will trust your oath. I’ll trust you with your magic the way I trust the knights. That is my compromise, Merlin. You can keep your sorcerous secrets, as long as I have your vow that they will not harm me, or mine, or Camelot.”

“You’ll trust me?” 

“Everything in chivalry comes down to trust, in the end.” 

“I don’t think I could be a knight,” Merlin said, reluctantly, his hands still held between Arthur’s. He didn’t want to break that touch. “Not that there’s anything wrong with knights, of course. Some of my best friends are knights, but …” 

“No, the idea of _Sir Merlin_ boggles my brain a little bit. We will change the wording a little bit. The only point on which I will _not budge,_ Merlin,” Arthur jiggled Merlin’s hands for emphasis, “is that this is _not_ something to be kept just between you and me. I _won’t_ have you hiding in the dark like a Dorocha.”

“It’s a useful secret,” Merlin said. “Nobody knows about me. If our enemies know that there’s a sorcerer in Camelot, they’ll come forewarned.” 

Arthur shook his head. “No. It is a secret that has outlived its purpose. Besides, if Sir Wulfric is going to be a knight and a sorcerer, then our enemies will come forewarned anyway. No. There is a royal pardon, and an appointment as Court Sorcerer waiting for you in Camelot, if you accept.”

The Court would know what he was. That was what he had always wanted, wasn’t it? 

Yet his stomach knotted inside him. The whole world would know Merlin for what he was, and what he had done. His guilt would be on display for everyone to see and to talk about. 

“You know what I’m asking from you?” Arthur said. “Don’t you? Even if I unbanned magic tomorrow, you won’t be accepted. You’ll lose a lot of friends. Ellyan, certainly, and maybe Percival too. I don’t want you to accept my offer, thinking that I’m offering you anything easy. It won’t be.”

He would never be able to slide unnoticed through the Citadel again; simple harmless Merlin on his daily round. He would be Merlin the Sorcerer. 

He licked his lips, nervously, testing the idea. “What if I don’t accept? What if I don’t want the Court to know what I am?”

“Then I’ll give you some money, and a good letter of recommendation, and you can go to Mercia with Cully tomorrow, and keep going. Those are the options, Merlin, but the final choice is yours. I know which choice I _want_ you to make, but I can’t make it for you.” 

His gut churned with doubt, until he looked up at Arthur’s eyes. Arthur’s lower lip was pinched in his teeth. The blue eyes were watching him closely; not challenging him but observing his every thought, waiting for him to choose. 

As if he was waking up from a dream, the decision was made. Why had he doubted it for a second? Arthur was worth the choice. Arthur’s dreams were worth fighting for. If an oath was what Arthur required from him to take his place at Arthur's side, then he would swear it. If becoming mysterious, sinister Merlin, the scandal of Camelot, was what Arthur needed from him, then Merlin would do it. 

And that was that, he realized. There was no real choice. It was Arthur, or nothing. It had always been Arthur or nothing, ever since the day he realized that he would lay his life down for Arthur; that he was willing to serve Arthur until the day he died. He had been drawn to Camelot to be with this man, drawn to Arthur’s side by the inexorable pull of their destinies, and that was something he had accepted for a long, long time. 

He felt his spirit rise with willingness. He would swear his oath, and he would be Arthur’s man. “I don’t want to leave Camelot,” he said. 

“Will you swear fealty? Now, and for the rest of your days?”

Merlin looked at his hands, held between Arthur’s, and nodded. “Yes.” 

“I will make a formal announcement in Camelot. But right now, all I need from you is your vow. This isn’t a knighting ceremony, so we don’t even need a witness. This is just between the two of us.” 

“I’m ready.” Merlin’s hands were still pressed palm-to-palm, held between Arthur’s hands. He realized that he was trembling, a light, high-speed shiver of his muscles. 

“Kneel, Merlin; old friend.” 

He set one foot behind the other, and lowered himself to his knees. The wooden floor was hard, but Arthur’s hands were a solid, warm anchor. 

“Merlin of Ealdor. Do you swear allegiance to Camelot, now, and for as long as you shall live?”

“I do.” 

“And do you solemnly swear by all that you hold holy that henceforth you will uphold the statutes, customs and laws of Camelot, and that you will obey and honour the Crown? The Crown, meaning me?”

“I do.” 

“Do you swear to use your … your magic,” Arthur’s voice wobbled a little bit on the word; a sign that he wasn’t as confident as he was trying to seem, “only with just cause, to defend to your utmost strength all those weaker than yourself, and to conduct yourself in all matters with the honour as befits a knight – er, a _person_ – of your station?”

“I do.” He was doing it. The tremors in him had stopped. He was doing it! It was really happening, and all his doubts had disappeared.

“Do you swear to take into your heart and exemplify in all your words and deeds the ideals of the Knights of Camelot, to the greater glory of your own honour, the honour of your peers, and the Crown in whose name you ride?” 

The honour of his peers…? He didn’t _have_ any peers. He suspected that he had no equals – except possibly Arthur himself. Yes, Arthur was the nearest to an equal he would ever have. Arthur had honour in plenty. He was brave, and honest, and good-hearted. Merlin might be a murderer, but he would swear to exemplify Arthur’s honour, and that was a high enough standard to hold himself to. 

“Merlin?”

“I do.” He saw Arthur open his mouth, and opened his own. “Wait, there’s more,” he said to Arthur, before Arthur could start the next line.

“No, there isn’t.”

“Yes, there is. You’ve never taken an oath like mine before. I, Merlin of Ealdor, swear by all that I hold holy that I will keep the following covenant…” 

“Mer…”

“Shut up, Arthur. To hold those who have taught me this art as equal to my parents, and to teach my successors the precepts of this art. To apply this art for the benefit of all those without it; I will keep them from harm and injustice; to guard my life and my art, remaining free from malice or mischief or self-aggrandizement; to serve the purest goals of my sworn liege lord without re.”

Interesting, Merlin thought. The words themselves seemed to be in the shape of a spell. The oaths of the knights was a sort of spell; binding but completely. This one was a real spell. He could feel the enchantment winding itself into shape in his mind, like a wreath of intent. He closed his eyes, letting it do its work inside him.

The words came out of his memory easily. “All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will never reveal. That I may keep this oath faithfully, let my own power bind my soul to this oath.” 

He leaned his own strength into the words, pushing the oath into reality, and he felt the final weave of the oath fall into place, winding itself into a complete whole. He felt the gold light up in his eyes with the effort. 

“What was that?” Arthur demanded; but Merlin noticed that he had not let go of Merlin’s hands.

“I found it in one of Gaius’s books. Do you like it?” 

“That was a spell.”

“It’s a sorcerer’s oath. I’ve bound myself up with it with my own magic. I can’t break it – I literally _cannot_ break it.” 

“Well.” Arthur sucked in a breath. “All right. We accept your pledge. From this day forth and for as long as We hold the Crown, you are Our liegeman. Then having sworn these solemn oaths know now that We, Arthur, son of Uther, by the sacred laws vested in Us, dub you ... um.” 

“Merlin.” 

“Merlin,” Arthur agreed. He opened his hands, freeing Merlin. “Arise, Merlin.”

Merlin grinned. He could feel the slight tingle as his vow settled into his mind, but it didn’t bite anywhere. He wouldn’t have any trouble carrying it. Arthur still made him smile, and he still felt not the least urge to be obsequious. 

The important things would not change, only the dangerous things – and Arthur might never find out just how much power Merlin had given up to him. His own morality was now vested in Arthur’s. He might be a murderer – but as long as Arthur was not, it didn’t matter. His life had reached the place where it was supposed to be. 

Arthur gripped him by his shoulders. “But seriously. How does that feel?” he asked, grinning. 

Merlin felt as if he was going to take off from the floor and float away. “Very good indeed!” 

Arthur gave him a congratulatory shake, and then yanked him forward off balance so that he collided with Arthur’s chest. Merlin found himself clamped tightly in that hug again. 

“Good man!” Arthur said, clapping Merlin’s back with one hand as if Merlin was a particularly fine hound. “Come on, you! Let’s go back to the others. For the first time ever, I am going to buy a sorcerer a drink.” 

As Merlin followed Arthur out of the little room where everything had changed, he felt a new hope and happiness rise inside him. 

Arthur knew his dark secret, and Arthur accepted him. He was going to be Court Sorcerer. Magic was going to be unbanned. Arthur was secure on his throne, and happily married to his Queen, and Merlin loved them both. And Arthur had a plan for the future, which meant that their destinies were coming true at last. 

It was the beginning of a new phase in his life. He had a lot of work ahead of him, but everything was going to turn out well. It was the beginning of a new day, and all was going to be well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are Anglo-Saxon Dictionaries online. Dictionaries in Spellish! For real! Go! Frolic! _Plaegan!_ Tell ‘em Fandom sent you!


End file.
